ce of divinity. Hence the greater part of their predictions
were eminently successful; and when the reverse occurred, the fault
was laid on the blind misconstruction of the human applicant. Thus no
great design was executed, no city founded, no colony planted, no war
undertaken, without the advice of an oracle. In the famine, the
pestilence, and the battle, the divine voice was the assuager of
terror and the inspirer of hope. All the instincts of our frailer
nature, ever yearning for some support that is not of the world, were
enlisted in behalf of a superstition which proffered solutions to
doubt, and remedies to distress.

Besides this general cause for the influence of oracles, there was
another cause calculated to give to the oracles of Greece a marked and
popular pre-eminence over those in Egypt. A country divided into
several small, free, and warlike states, would be more frequently in
want of the divine advice, than one united under a single monarchy, or
submitted to the rigid austerity of castes and priestcraft; and in
which the inhabitants felt for political affairs all the languid
indifference habitual to the subjects of a despotic government. Half
a century might pass in Egypt without any political event that would
send anxious thousands to the oracle; but in the wonderful ferment,
activity, and restlessness of the numerous Grecian towns, every month,
every week, there was some project or some feud for which the advice
of a divinity was desired. Hence it was chiefly to a political cause
that the immortal oracle of Delphi owed its pre-eminent importance.
The Dorian worshippers of Apollo (long attached to that oracle, then
comparatively obscure), passing from its neighbourhood and befriended
by its predictions, obtained the mastership of the Peloponnesus;--
their success was the triumph of the oracle. The Dorian Sparta (long
the most powerful of the Grecian states), inviolably faithful to the
Delphian god, upheld his authority, and spread the fame of his
decrees. But in the more polished and enlightened times, the
reputation of the oracle gradually decayed; it shone the brightest
before and during the Persian war;--the appropriate light of an age of
chivalry fading slowly as philosophy arose!

XVIII. But the practice of divination did not limit itself to these
more solemn sources--its enthusiasm was contagious--its assistance was
ever at hand [53]. Enthusiasm operated on the humblest individuals.
On