me for any calling to it? Will it
come the sooner for the banishment of all other literature? If Mr Sims
makes his escape into the woods, and sits there naked and ignorant as
a savage, will inspiration visit him? Will trying to _un_educate his
mind, however successful he may be in the attempt,--and he has really
carried his efforts in this direction to a most heroic length--exactly
enable him, or any other, to compete with this dreaded influence of
foreign literature? And if not, what other measures are to be taken
against this insidious enemy? We see none.

But no nation was ever hurt, as far as we have heard, by the light of
genius shining on it from another. And as to this national
literature--though it will not obey the conjurations of Mr Sims, we
may be quite sure that, in due time, it will make its appearance.
America can no more _begin_ a literature, no more start fresh from its
woods and its prairies, than we here in England could commence a
literature, neither can it any more abstract itself from the influence
of its own institutions, the temper of its people, its history, its
natural scenery, than we here in England can manumit ourselves from
the influence of the age in which we live. These things determine
themselves by their own laws. You may as well call out to the tides of
the ocean to flow this way or that, as think to control these great
tidal movements of the human mind. America cannot _begin_ a
literature, for it must look up to the same wellhead, or rather to the
same mountain streams as ourselves; neither do we suppose that it is
seriously anxious to disclaim all connexion with Bacon and Shakspeare,
Milton and Locke; but it can, and will, continue and carry on a
literature of its own in a separate stream, branching from what we
must be permitted to call, for some time at least, the main current;
and which, now diverging from that, and now approaching to it, will at
length wear for itself a deep and independent channel.

But such slow and gradual progress of things by no means suits the
impetuous patriotism of Mr Sims. He is possessed evidently with the
idea that some great explosion of national genius would suddenly take
place, if the people would but resolve upon it. It is an affair of
public opinion, like any other measure of policy; if but the universal
suffrage could be brought to bear upon it, the thing were done; it is
from the electoral urn that the whole scroll of poets and philosophers
is