There is a period between us and these first parents of our present progress that is strangely obscure. It is a sort of antediluvian age, in which there were evidently stupendous mechanical powers of some kind, and an extensive acquaintance with some things. The ruins of Egypt alone would prove this. But a deluge of oblivion has washed over them, and left these colossal bones to tell what story they can. The only way to account for such an extinction is, that they were monstrous contrivances out of all proportion to their age, spasmodic successes in science, wonders born out of due time,--deriving no sustenance or support from a wide and various kindred, and therefore, like the giants which were of old, dying out with their day. It is different with what has taken place since. Every work has come in its right time, just when best prepared for, and most required. There is not one but is sustained on every side, and fits into its place, as each new piece of colored stone in a mosaic is sustained by the progressive picture. Every one is conserved by its connections. Whatever has been done is sure,--and the past being secure, the future is guarantied. It is impossible that the present knowledge in the world should be extinguished. Nothing but a stroke of imbecility upon the race, nothing but the destruction of its libraries, nothing but the paralysis of the printing-press, and the annihilation of these means of intercommunication,--nothing but some such arbitrary intervention could accomplish it. The facts already in human possession, and the constitution of the mind, together insure what we have as imperishable, and what we are to obtain as illimitable. We come now to another suggestive characteristic of the time,--another of its promises. So far we find Progress gathering fulness and strength,--making sure of itself. It has also been gathering impetus. It has been, all along, accumulating momentum, and now it sweeps on with breathless _rapidity_. The reason is, that, the farther it has gone, the more it has multiplied its agents. The present generation is not only carried forward, but is excited in every quarter. The activity and versatility of the intellect would appear to be inexhaustible. Instead of getting overstrained, or becoming lethargic, it never was so powerful, never had so many resources, never was so wide-awake. Men are busy turning over every stone in their way, in the hope of finding something new. Nothing would seem too small for human attention, nothing too great for human undertaking. The government Patent-Office, with its countless chambers, is not so large a museum of inventions as the capacious brain of to-day.