He did indeed try the plainest of speech, not only on dead tyrants and their ministers, but on the society of his own time. The elder Disraeli remarks that Richard Steele meant the _Tatler_ to deal with three provinces—manners, letters, and politics; and that, as to politics, “it remained for the chaster genius of Addison to banish this disagreeable topic from his elegant pages.” Horace was in this respect the Addison of Satire under the Empire. In Juvenal, the Italian medley once more exhibits, though with necessary modifications, the larger and more vigorous spirit of its early prime. The poetical epistle, which in Horace is so near to Satire, usually differed from it in having less of the chatty miscellaneous character, and in being rather applied to continuous didactic exposition. The prose epistle, which was often meant for publication even when formally private, also contributed not only to express, but to mould, public opinion. Epigrams and lampoons might happen to be vehicles of a general feeling; but they differ from the forms of literature here considered in being essentially personal, like the satirical poetry of early Greece. There is yet another agency, common to Greece and Rome, at which we must glance—the Oracles. Often, of course, they had a most important part in directing public opinion at critical moments; but this was not all. There were occasions on which an oracle became, in a strict sense, the organ of a political party. Thus the noble Athenian family of the Alcmaeonidae bribed the Delphian priests to make the oracle an organ of public opinion in favor of freeing Athens from Peisistratus. Accordingly, whenever Spartans came to consult the god on any subject whatever, this topic was always worked into the response. Apollo, in short, kept up a series of most urgent leading articles; and at last the Spartans were roused to action. Then, when Cleomenes, one of the two Spartan kings, wished to have his colleague Demaratus deposed, he made friends with an influential man at Delphi; the influential man bribed the priestess; and the oracle declared that Demaratus was not of the blood royal. In this case, the fraud was found out; the priestess was deposed; and when Cleomenes died mad, men said that this was the hand of Apollo. When the Persians were about to invade Greece, the Delphic oracle took the line of advising the Greeks to submit. The Athenians sent to ask what they should do, and the oracle said, “Fly to the ends of the earth.” The Athenians protested that they would not leave the temple until they got a more comfortable answer. Hereupon an influential Delphian advised them to assume the garb of suppliants; and this time Apollo told them to trust to their wooden walls. Herodotus mentions between seventy and eighty oracles (I believe) of one sort or another, and less than half of these contain _predictions_. The predictions usually belong to one of two classes; first, those