Its vital element needs disengaging from what is foreign and temporary, and is employed in efforts after freedom, more vigorous and hopeful as its years increase.

Its beginnings are no measures of its capabilities, nor of its scope.

At first, no one knows what it is, or what it is worth.

It remains, perhaps, for a time, quiescent; it tries, as it were, its limbs, and proves the ground under it, and feels its way.

From time to time it makes essays which fail, and are, in consequence, abandoned.