526 BIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNT 



name just mentioned, and the presumption or the simplicity 

 to believe that it could reform the world. In a land where 

 the tendency to the romantic and the mysterious seems so ge- 

 neral, that even philosophy and science have not escaped the 

 infection, and in states where there is much that requires 

 amendment, it is not wonderful if associations have been form- 

 ed for redressing grievances, and reforming both religion and 

 government. Some men, truly philanthropic, and others, 

 merely profligate, may have joined in this combination ; the 

 former, very erroneously supposing, that the interests of truth 

 and of mankind may be advanced by cabal and intrigue ; and 

 the latter, more wisely concluding, that these are. engines well 

 adapted to promote the dissemination of error, and the 

 schemes of private aggrandisement. An ex-Jesuit may have 

 been the author of this plan, and whether he belonged to the 

 former or the latter class, may have chosen for the model of 

 the new arrangement, those institutions which he knew from 

 experience to be well adapted for exercising a strong but secret 

 influence in the direction of human affairs. 



In all this there is nothing incredible ; but the same, I 

 think, cannot be asserted, when the particulars are examined 

 in detail. It is extremely difficult, as has already been re- 

 marked, for a foreigner, in such circumstances as Mr Robi- 

 son's, to avoid delusion, or to determine between the different 

 kinds of testimony of which he must make use. With me, 

 who have no access to the original documents, and if I had, 

 who have neither leisure nor inclination to examine them, an 

 opinion can only be formed from the internal evidence, that is, 

 from the nature of the facts, and the style in which they 

 are recorded. The style of the works from which Mr Robi- 

 son composed his narrative, is not such as to inspire confi- 

 dence j for, wherever it is quoted, it is that of an angry and in- 

 flated 



