"New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth; They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth; Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves must Pilgrims be, Launch our _Mayflower_, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea, Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted key." IV CHARLES SUMNER: THE APPEAL TO EDUCATED MEN In every country and time, the era of national peril has been the creative era for the intellect. The eloquence of Greece was at its best when Philip attacked Athens and Demosthenes defended its liberties. Dante's poems were born of the collision between the despots who sought to enslave Florence, and the patriots who dreamed of democracy. Milton's songs were written during the English Revolution, when the Puritan, seeking to diffuse the good things of life, and the Cavalier, who wished to monopolize the earth's treasure, came into a deadly collision. In accordance with that principle it seems natural to expect that the scholars of the Republic should do their best work during the era of agitation, when the national intellect was white hot, and public excitement burned by day and night. The anti-slavery epoch, therefore, was the Augustan Era of American literature, when the historians, poets and philosophers lent distinction to American literature. At that time Motley was writing his "History of the Netherlands"; Prescott, his "History of Mexico and Spain"; Whittier, his songs of slavery and freedom; Lowell was the satirist of the debate, and was writing his "Biglow Papers," and Emerson, the philosopher, was undermining the foundations and shaking the principles of slavery, even as Samson pulled down the temple of the olden time.