In this enumeration I have intentionally looked somewhat forward; for what is in one particular generation you cannot find out until its effects are plain in the next. I want to accentuate it that Webster belonged to a society which had made some of the extraordinary figures whose names are given, and was making the rest of them. When the view just suggested has been taken, and if in comparing New England with any other community--even with Athens, Florence, England, or Germany, in their best eras--periods of time be equalized and differences of population be properly allowed for, it will appear that the conditions moulding Webster were more energetic in productivity than can be found elsewhere. And if, in this comparison, the relative general condition of the masses in each community be duly taken into the account, the result will be far more favorable to New England; for a high level of the masses is a much better proof of a fecund culture than merely many striking individual instances. Thus we bring out the point that Webster was born, grew up, and lived in a nursery prolific in men and women of extraordinary powers and virtues. How insignificant is the muster-roll of any other part of our country! I compare that of the south because I am familiar with it, and one can with better manners disparage his own section than another. The ante-bellum southern treasures of art and literature except speeches, political and forensic, can be counted on the fingers of one hand without taking them all. The poetry of Poe, a few essays of Legaré, especially that on Demosthenes, Calhoun's Dissertation on Government, and Toombs's Tremont Temple lecture, are all that are pre-eminent; and some of the historians of our literature insist that Poe was southern only in his prejudices, and not in his making. To turn away from authors, how few can be found to compare in education, polish, and literary or scientific accomplishments with average New Englanders of their several professions or occupations. Toombs, in the diamond-like brilliance of his extempore effusion in talks or speeches, is as solitary in the south as Catullus, the greatest of the spontaneous poets of his nation, was in the Rome of his day.