OF THE LATE PROFESSOR ROBISON. 525 



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 Ilhiminati ; 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 ffluminatism, 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 livino- 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 Robison - 

 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 



Vojl. VIL P. II. 3 X name 



