OF THE LATE PROFESSOR ROBISON. 523 



tempt to trace the sources of so extraordinary a succession of 

 events. As to the circumstances which first led him, and led 

 him, I think, so unhappily, to look for those sources in the 

 institutions of Free Masonry, or in the combination of some 

 German mystics, I have nothing satisfactory to offer. He was 

 accustomed to refined and subtle speculations, and naturally 

 entertained a partiality for theories that called into action the 

 powers by which he was peculiarly distinguished. 



In 1797, he published a book, entitled, " Proofs of a Con- 

 *' spiracy against all the Religions and Governments of Eu- 

 " rope." He supposes, that this conspiracy originated in the 

 Lodges of the Free Masons, but that it first assumed a regu- 

 lar form in the hands of certain philosophic fanatics, distin- 

 guished in Germany by the name of Illuminati ; that after the 

 suppression of this society by the authority of Government, 

 the spirit was kept alive by what was called the German 

 Union ; that its principles gradually infected most of the phi- 

 losophers of France and Germany, and lastly broke forth with 

 full force in the French Revolution. 



The history of Illuminatism, as it is called, forms the princi- 

 pal part of the work ; and on a subject involved in great my- 

 stery, where all the evidence came through the hands of friends 

 or of enemies, it was exceedingly difficult for one living in a 

 foreign country, and a stranger to the public opinion, to obtain 

 accurate information. Accordingly, the events related, and 

 the characters described, as proofs of the conspiracy, are of so 

 extraordinary a nature, that it is difficult to persuade one's 

 self that the original documents from which Mr Robisok 

 drew up his narrative were entitled to all the confidence which 

 he reposed in them. 



I do not mean to question the general fact, that there did 

 exist in Germany a society having the vanity to assume the 



Vox. VIL P. H. 3 X name 



