"Indifferent to the future, and not daring to recall the past, he thought of nothing but securing himself from all that could sadden the mind, and disturb the system which he had skillfully arranged on the credit of those then in power. It is on this account, that, of all his contemporaries, he has celebrated none but the friends of his master, or, at least, those whom he could praise without fear of compromising his favor. "In what I have said of Horace, my chief design has been to show that this Proteus, who counted among his friends and admirers even those whose conduct he censured, chose rather to capitulate than contend; that he attached no great importance to his own rules, and adhered to his principles no longer than they favored his views. "JUVENAL began his satiric career where the other finished, that is to say, he did that for morals and liberty, which Horace had done for decorum and taste. Disdaining artifice of every kind, he boldly raised his voice against the usurpation of power; and incessantly recalled the memory of the glorious æra of independence to those degenerate Romans, who had substituted suicide in the place of their ancient courage; and from the days of Augustus to those of Domitian, only avenged their slavery by an epigram or a bonmot. "The characteristics of Juvenal were energy, passion, and indignation: it is, nevertheless, easy to discover that he is sometimes more afflicted than exasperated. His great aim was to alarm the vicious, and, if possible, to exterminate vice, which had, as it were, acquired a legal establishment. A noble enterprise! but he wrote in a detestable age, when the laws of nature were publicly violated, and the love of their country so completely eradicated from the breasts of his fellow-citizens, that, brutified as they were by slavery and voluptuousness, by luxury and avarice, they merited rather the severity of the executioner than the censor. "Meanwhile the empire, shaken to its foundations, was rapidly crumbling to dust. Despotism was consecrated by the senate; liberty, of which a few slaves were still sensible, was nothing but an unmeaning word for the rest, which, unmeaning as it was, they did not dare to pronounce in public. Men of rank were declared enemies to the state for having praised their equals; historians were condemned to the cross, philosophy was proscribed, and its professors banished. Individuals felt only for their own danger, which they too often averted by accusing others; and there were instances of children who denounced their own parents, and appeared as witnesses against them! It was not possible to weep for the proscribed, for tears themselves became the object of proscription; and when the tyrant of the day had condemned the accused to banishment or death, the senate decreed that he should be thanked for it, as for an act of singular favor.