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nacy. Montjoye's History of the Conspiracy of Orleans* is ranked with the romances of St. Réal.

On the murder of Louis XVI. the authors observe that it was chiefly the result of general causes; that, in whatever manner he had conducted himself, topics of accusation, nearly equal in weight to those which were brought forwards, might probably have been found; and that the attempt to criminate the individual was in fact an effort to remove the king.

The eleventh volume contains horrible details of the war of Vendée, and ascribes to General Hoche great merit in quelling the disturbances of that district. The troubles of St. Domingo also occupy a considerable extent.-The principal topic, however, continues to be the warfare of the Girondist and Metropolitan parties. The Parisians treated every endeavour of the Convention to surround itself with a provincial guard, as a systematic attempt to excite insurrections in the departments; to subdivide France into petty commonwealths; to violate the decreed unity of the republic; and to establish a treasonable federalism. On the 31st May 1793, the Parisians seized on the government by force, and executed the Girondists and their chief friends, on this charge of federalism. The opinion is highly probable that France would have been more free, and more tranquil, if nine or ten clusters of departments had been formed; and if each of the large cities had become a seat of representative authorities. For defence, France would have been as well adapted, for offence worse; it would thus have become equally secure and more pacific. We ought not to wonder, then, if, both at Bourdeaux and Marseilles, strong symptoms were perceived of a disposition to govern themselves. The cities of Greece thought it not enough to be free; they aspired also to be regulated by their own laws.

The volume concludes with an account of the execution of that extraordinary heroine, Charlotte Corday.

ART. IX. Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire du Jacobinisme : i. c. Memoirs illustrating the History of Jacobinism. By the Abbé BARRUEL. IVth Part. 8vo. pp. 620. Dulau and Co. De Boffe, &c. London. 1798.

ΤΗ

HE history of illuminism will form a most interesting chapter in modern ecclesiastical annals. The great influence which this sect has had, and still retains, over the literary mind of one of the most literate of modern nations; the ingenuity of its internal structure, which produced, as if by

* See Rev. vol. xx. p. 536. N. S.

magic, the invisible concert and silent co-operation of innume rable and scattered agents; the persevering attachment of its early votaries to the principles, if not to the forms, of their confederacy; the complete and sudden change which it rought or announced, in the singular, antient, and wide-spred order of free-masons; and its yet probable indirect influence on political revolutions, cannot but render it a curious and important object of analysis. Men eminent for talents, for know. lege, for official weight, and for personal character, have united to forward its designs. Rich merchants, nobles, and several sovereigns, have frequented its congregations, and have dis tinguished its adherents by their favor and its martyrs by their recompences. Two governments only are yet characterized as its persecutors: the one of them has since prohibited the Iliad; and the other has a popish bishop for its prince. Presumptions, then, are in favour of this sect.-A million of persons, (the Abbé BARRUEL rates them at that number,) all of the educated and many of the opulent classes of society, cannot have associated for purposes of monstrous evil; they expected the approbation of conscience, or the eventual gratitude and patronage of their fellow-citizens. Their collective intentions can neither have been palpably absurd, nor hostile to the probable interests of man. Yet of this sect the Abbé BARRUEL perseveres in presenting a most odious picture. All that has been imagined to its disadvantage is amassed by him with unsparing hostility, deformed with stabbing eloquence, and aggravated with uncandid hermeneutical dexterity, in order to conjure up a new goblin of alarm. Of this German ghost he makes a most terrific scarecrow, by dressing it out in the bloodsprinkled garb of his own country; and by tacking to its train a wholly disconnected catalogue of anecdotes of French villany, French perfidy, French cruelty, and French atrocity.

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As the Abbé repeatedly refers to our account of his and Professor Robison's work, we must direct the reader's attention back to our 25th volume, p. 303 and p. 501. In the course of our philological strictures, we ventured to observe that Manichean and atheist, idealist and materialist, christian and impious, are not synonimous terms, although confounded by the Abbé that Erse is not Hebrew; and that the words Mac Benac afford no proof that Free-Masonry is derived from the Manicheans. We endeavoured to shew that, probably, Masonry is not even derived from the knights templars, but was apparently founded at Paris by Henry Cornelius Agrippa, for purposes neither sectarian nor factious; and that, although its ritual may not employ the dialect of the Athanasian creed, and may include the words liberty and equality, yet even theism, and still

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less republicanism, do not constitute the perpetual and essential aim, the main drift and business, of the order; since, as is historically certain, it sided in Great Britain for a whole century with the high party for church and king. Thus nearly a volume of his denunciation, viz. that which respects the inhe rent mischief of free-masonry, loses the greatest part of its weight. What is to become of our social amusements, if lodges of Bucks, Odd Fellows, United Friars, &c. are to be dressed out in Auto da Fé garments, as seminaries of sedition and atheism?

We have also, but perhaps insufficiently, tried to indicate the difference between the pupils of French and of German philosophy; between the Encyclopedists and the Illuminés.

About the period of the publication of the Encyclopedia, the French philosophers began to intrude into the lodges of freemasonry, for the purpose of propagating their anti-christian, doctrines without exciting the jealousy of the magistrate. The grand public topic of their æra was infidelity and they confederated in order to obtain for it the support of the laws. We have no doubt that revolution made a part of the plan of the anti-christian sect, as often as their hopes flagged in respect to establishing their tenets on the throne: but it does not appear that the revolution was previously intended to be anti-monarchial. The primary object of the conspirators, was the abolition of Christianity: out of this grew, as a mean, the scheme of assembling the States General, whom public opinion was to oppose to the church, and to retain as a permanent branch of constitution.

In Germany, however, the philosophers first combined at a much later period; when the American insurrection was already bringing into general discussion questions of represent-, ation, popular rights, and forms of constitution. The grand public topic of their æra was liberty; and they accordingly made it the basis of their plan of institution. They imagined an interior government by deputations. Their organization was representative, and tended to familiarize republicanism. With them, the primary object was apparently political innovation. We have no doubt that French literature had made many converts to infidelity among the men of letters in Germany: but the Illuminés seem ever to have been of opinion that a popular infidelity would not be favourable to popular morality, and to the true interests of mankind. They encouraged, indeed, almost always, the selection of unbelievers for their higher grades; yet they seem to have wished that unbelief should remain the exclusive privilege of a secret and sovereign order. They aspired, like the Mandarins of China, to direct a reli

gious populace without partaking its superstitions: but, more benevolent than the Mandarins, they aspired gradually to advance its culture by amending its religious services. They instituted, therefore, a committee of Magi, (bearbeiten eine volksreligion welche der Orden demnachst der welt geben will,) elaborately to form a popular religion, which the order intended to confer on the world.

The Parisian institution had chiefly a descending influence, and addressed to its corresponding lodges the libels which it wished secretly to inculcate:-in that of the Illuminés an ascending influence is visible: the apparent obedience to hidden superiors was only preserved by their issuing such commands as were desired by their devotees. Their over-ruling synod was changed by insensible rotation. * From a discipline and a purpose so far distinct, it was not probable that similar effects should result. The French lodges, tutored into a tolerance for moral licentiousness, too frequently became seminaries of freeliving as well as free-thinking, and are said sometimes to have served as veils for orgies resembling those to which the Chevalier de la Barre† fell a martyr. The German lodges, on the contrary, seem to have superinduced on the members, in consequence of their system of mutual espial ‡, a guardedness of deportment, and a decorum perfectly exemplary; somewhat anaJogous to that produced by reciprocal inspection in presbyterian congregations. To literary industry, the aspirants of illuminism were trained in the lodges, by exacting biographical and other communications from them; and on industry they were taught to rely for ultimate success, in the great work of promoting in every possible direction the improvement of human kind. This zeal for philanthropic exertion was so entirely the occupation and characteristic business of the Illuminés, that Weishaupt informs us (Pythagoras, p. 670) that he had origi.

*In Hermippus redivivus, (p. 163,) it is asserted that one Vaughan, an Englishman, was then president of the Illuminated. Other documents mention one Eveling of Wootton in Surry, as master of an Order or branch of some confederacy of this kind. The Abbé BARRUEL Supposes the supremacy of modern Illuminism to have passed from Weishaupt to Bode, but omits to acquaint us whether, on the decease of the latter, Professor Kant acceded to the Grand-Lamaship of the Order.

His memory was revived by the Constituting Assembly of France:this was perhaps an expression of the general will, but such general wills should never be expressed by the lawgiver.

This word is used by Lord Bacon to translate the French espionage: it lay dormant during a long sunshine of freedom, but it seems ne. Tessary to revive it.

nally

nally intended for them the name of Perfectibilists; in order perpetually to remind them that the progressive perfecting of society was the aim and end of their confraternity. Accord ingly, this order has produced a great number of benevolent Quixotes, knights errant of reform, whose every pamphlet tilts at an abuse, and whose every soliloquy bewails some suffering of spell-bound humanity. Germany is full of these passionate lovers of social amelioration; whose officious gallantry, if it could find no public grievance to redress, would still, still, be for brushing off that none*. These improvers seem to think that they have lost a day, when they have omitted to reveal to the people some hitherto unfelt inconvenience or oppression; and, as their zeal usually believes that the attainment even of some petty reformation is worth a large expenditure of time and toil, and a great sacrifice of leisure and ease; so it usually considers the grander interests of mankind as worth the hazard of forcible revolution. This supererogatory patriotism (which bears, perhaps, to genuine love of country the same relation which mysticism bears to piety) deserved at most only the nettlewhip of a satirist. To feel or suffer with our fellow-citizens is no doubt an office of virtue: but to suffer for a people who feel not their own ill-being may seem liable, among worldlings, to the charge of superfine sensibility. Still this "devout excess" is a fault of generosity, not a crime of selfishness, and should never be met with a serious hostility: but the Abbé BARRUEL's style of character-staining is in crimson distemper: he has no more indulgence for the enthusiast and the castle-builder, than for the robber and the assassin.

A similar indiscriminating hostility notoriously disgraced the original' persecutors of the Illuminés. Not contented with striking at Weishaupt and the leaders of the association, the young student Baron Franenberg was expelled from the univer sity of Ingolstadt and deprived of his stipend, as edelknab; and fifteen fellow-students having accompanied him on horseback at his departure, as a mark of esteem, all the fifteen were rusticated (relegist) by express order of the government. As the cavalcade passed by the house of Professor Wibmer, he came to the window and saluted them approvingly for which he was summoned and reprimanded by the public authorities. Von Delling, the town-clerk of Munich, having expressed his regret at the cassation of his friend the récorder, Fischer, he also was cashiered, imprisoned for three days, and sent away. All subsequent hope of redress was quashed by an edict, which forbad the condemned to present any memorial or appeal. See the

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