Great works are not what we require of Americans; we would rather endeavor to discover in them the traces of the moral spirit of their country, its philosophical and historic signs, rather than poetic fables skilfully constructed and eloquently told. For example, these female poets of North America, suggest an interesting question for Europeans to examine. Have all those Misses and Mistresses who write poems, dramas and sonnets, any features of resemblance with our female authors? Has America, which is represented so coarse in manners, inherited the vices of European society, and become so degenerate as to give birth to that monstrous nondescript, named among us a _bas-bleu_? We have endeavored, diligently, to discover, in this large volume, traces of resemblance between our women of letters and the female poets of America, but we have discovered none. These daughters and wives of American citizens, of merchants, bankers, magistrates and doctors in theology, do not write as our female authors, from vain ambition, or love, or scandal, or (what among us is by no means uncommon) to repent of the scandal that they have occasioned. They write as among us young girls draw or sing. Poesy is for them an ornamental art, and nothing more. Besides, this great number of female poets in America, is explained by the much more liberal education received by the women of English blood and of the Protestant religion. We can find better specimens of poetry, certainly, but nothing equalling them in the discretion and reserve that reign in all their verses. We have sought, diligently, to discover the sentiments which American women are most pleased in translating into written poetry: one only is expressed, freely and energetically--maternal love. The other sentiments and virtues are carefully veiled, as subjects upon which it would be improper to dwell. Such verses are full of scruples and delicacies, and to us, it is their principal charm. Love, so difficult for the female heart to acknowledge in words; passionate confidences, so easily turned into sarcasms, and almost repulsive when uttered by the mouth of a woman, find no place in the inspirations of the American poetess. There are no strongly expressed individual passions. Vague and objectless longings--the cold lights of mere fancy, are the characteristics of those writers. Sometimes we discover a regret, or a mournful remembrance, but so obscure as to be nearly lost in a vastly diffused hope of some good which is not realized. We have endeavored to discover if the sentiment of conjugal love were there, but we are disappointed. To us, Europeans, who are overwhelmed with romances, in which this chaste sentiment is analyzed and written of in a manner to produce absolute nausea, it is not, perhaps, known how much discretion there is in this passionless exterior, and how commendable it is that so holy a sentiment should not pass the sacred inclosures of the female