We may be sure that literature will always be as fresh as it has been. It is possible that we may never have greater men than Shakspeare and Milton, and Dante and Goethe; but there is nothing to hinder our having men just as great. Those who are to come will only bore in different directions, and find new deposits. Shakspeare and Milton were great writers, but the fields they occupied were their own. They do not resemble each other in any particular. Dante and Goethe were great writers, but there are no points of resemblance between them. When Scott was issuing his wonderful series of novels, it seemed to his cotemporaries, I suppose, that there was no field left for a successor; yet Dickens, in the next generation, won as many readers and as much admiration as he, in a field whose existence Scott never suspected. Very different is the world of thought from the world of matter, in the fact that its deposits are found in no particular spot. The mind can go out in quest of thought in no direction without reward; and every man receives from his age motive and culture which peculiarly prepare him for the work of supplying its needs. There are some who seem to think that the golden age of literature is past--that nothing modern is worthy of notice, and that it is one of the vices of the age that we discard so much the teachings of the literary fathers. But the world of thought is exhaustless, and we have only to produce a finer civilization than the world has ever seen, to secure, as its consummate flower, a literature of corresponding excellence. What has been said of the world of matter and the world of thought, may be said, and is implied, of the world of men. We are accustomed to say that great emergencies make great men. But this is not true. Great men are always found to meet great emergencies: but God makes them, and leads them through a course of discipline which prepares them for their work. It is one of the remarkable facts of history, so patent that all have seen and acknowledged it, that to meet every great epoch a man has been prepared. I mean it in no irreverent or theological sense when I say that there has been a series of Christs, whose appearance has denoted the departure of old dispensations and the inauguration of new. Men have arisen who have torn down temples, and demolished idols, and swept away systems, and knocked off fetters, and introduced their age into a freer, better, and larger life; and it will always be so while time shall last. Men will arise equal to the wants of their age wherever men are civilized. The causes which produce emergencies are the agents which educate men to meet them; and nature is prodigal of her material among men, as among the things made for his service.