e indebted, it seems, to science as to history. This, too, has
disturbed his faith in certain pleasing and most profitable stories.
"_That cold-blooded demon called Science_," he exclaims, "has taken
the place of all other demons. He has certainly cast out innumerable
devils, however he may still spare the principal. Whether we are the
better for his intervention is another question. There is reason to
apprehend that in disturbing our human faith in shadows, we have lost
some of those wholesome moral restraints which might have kept many of
us virtuous where the laws could not."

A wholesome moral restraint in starting at every bush, and hating
every old woman for a witch! Mr Sims, from his own intellectual
altitude, pronounces these faiths to be "shadows;" he does not
believe--not he--in the walking about at night of impalpable white
sheets; but if you should happen to be of the same opinion with
himself, then the cold-blooded demon of science has seized you for his
prey. In this, there are many others who resemble Mr Sims; one often
meets with half-educated men and women, who would take it as an
affront, an unpardonable insult, if you were to suppose them addicted
to the childish superstitions of the nursery, who nevertheless cannot
endure to hear those very superstitions decried or exploded by others.
They want to "_dis_believe and tremble" at the same time.

We must state, in justice to Mr Sims, that this outbreak against
science is the preluding strain to his "Wigwams and Cabins," where he
has the intention of dealing with the supernatural and the marvellous.
Let him tell his marvels, and welcome; a ghost story is just as good
now as ever it was; but why usher it in with this didactic folly? Of
these tales, as we do not wish again to refer to the works of Mr Sims,
we may say here, that they appear to give some insight into the manner
of life of the early settlers, and their intercourse with the savages.
In this point of view they might be read with profit, could we be sure
that the pictures they present were tolerably faithful. But a writer
who has no partiality whatever for matter of fact, and who
systematically prefers fiction to truth, comes before us with unusual
suspicion, and requires an additional guarantee.[14]

"_Paperson Literature and Art._" Our readers have already had a
specimen, and not an unfavourable one, of the eloquence of Mrs
Margaret Fuller. This lady is by no means given to the flagrant
absu