to the schools of innovation. Thus book-clubs, authors, and printers, gradually came to form a powerful party of opinion, vibrating in unison with the national mind of Germany; and all this is not contrivance, it is symptomatic merely of the course and direction of the tide of public spirit. : There is indeed one species of romance in which the friends of stability or rather of retrogression) can conveniently excel -in plot-finding-in giving a marvellous and almost supernatural colouring to daily incidents and processes-in describing every private supper as an orgie, every tavern-meeting as a lodge-in treating promiscuous conversations as exoteric, and confidential conversations as mysteries-in denominating the introduction of a new acquaintance among men of letters, an initiation, and any subsequent change of his opinion, an admission to a higher grade in the invisible hierarchy of philosophy. In this auctioneer-style of hyperbole, the most trivial incidents are disguised to vulgar readers in enigmatic importance, and partake of the stupendous supernaturality of the transactions in Herman of Unna*. The sympathy of companions in the same studies, and the intuitive consentaneity of superior minds, are thus attributed to formal conspiracy and secret combination. Genius acquires a tyrannic importance, and is supposed to realize its will by the vile assistance of oaths of allegiance and disciplined terrorists: not by its revealing to upright men the expedient direction of their voluntary beneficence. "The reader of the Apologie der Illuminaten (Frankfurt, 1786) must wonder what it is for which they had to apologize. A rare absence of indiscretion appears in general to have fallen to their lot: they seem strongly to have feared whatever was indecorous and reprehensible, and to have been trained never to endanger themselves: it would seem as if they aimed at uniting the mildness of the Christian with the resolution of the hero. We look at these sectaries as at men skaiting. A sense of their insecurity and danger represses all envy of their occupation, all inclination to join them. Yet the spectator feels obliged by the exhibition of their evolutions; by their exploring so boldly the cracking ice of despotism; by their smoothly skimming on the outside edge of liberality, and maintaining the easy poise of conscious skill in a very slippery career. It must have been mortifying to the Abbé BARRUEL, after the enormities of opinion charged by him on the Illuminés, to find so little practical mischief individually or collectively Jaid to their charge. In order to constitute something like an * See Rev. vol. xv. N. S. p. 21. impeachimpeachment, he has recourse, in his xith chapter, to the French Revolution; and what was originally charged on the Encyclopedists is now to be transferred to the Illuminés. It was difficult to make out any connexion between the crimes of the Parisians and the opinions of the Bavarians. The link of union chosen is Mirabeau; who is supposed to have fetched from the lodge of Illuminés at Berlin tize maxims, the management, and the profligacy which he professed at Paris. As well might the civil war of China be ascribed to the British embassy; or the conduct of the Anti-jacobins in Ireland to Delolme's History of the Flagellants *. Improbable as it may appear that the Abbé BARRUEL can have had prompters, it is scarcely possible that he should know, without extraordinary or supernatural aid, many particulars which are told very glibly and roundly. • The reader will undoubtedly not require (says he, p. 469.) that I should here name the men to whom these confidential communications were made: but I can aver that they reached ministers; whose wisdom tolerated, for a time, at London, Vandernoot, Noel, and his other accomplices; keeping an eye over them, until they were sent to conspire elsewhere, and to project the means of gaining by fictitious caresses the populace whose arms they fear.' We have not received a French work intitled Le Tombeau de Jaques Molay, nor do we know whether it be justly ascribed to M. Ferrand: but we hear that it professes to indicate a hitherto invisible branch of the enlightened sect, and has named Price, Priestley, Sheridan, and Fox, among the chosen chiestains of English Illuminism. The public will hence be able to understand against what sort of persons and opinions, these clamorous and baseless accusations are intended to be hurled. The progress of our inquiries respecting Illuminism has given us, it will be perceived, a more favourable opinion of the complexion of this sect than at first we had formed. Let us however observe that, while the Illuminés continue undermost in Germany, it is likely that they should tend to operate as a French party. Persons inclining to republicanism, on the hypothesis of an elective constitution, are everywhere to be found among the most zealous defenders of their country: but, on the hypothesis of an hereditary constitution, they are not unlikely to view with tolerant apathy, at least, the progress of a republicanizing invader. If, by any convulsion, the Illumines were to become uppermost in Germany, if they were already the literary priesthood of a consolidated and reformed empire, they would tend to operate as an Anti-gallican party, See Review, vol. lvi. p. 358. and and to stimulate their country to the re-conquest of Holland and of Flanders; and to the emancipation of those beautiful provinces along the Rhine, from the barbarizing influence of French manners and legislation, and from the rapacious tyranny of directorial usurpation. Patriotically speaking, Great Britain seems to have an interest in the ascendancy of the party founded by the Illuminés. The main drift of the splendid peroration of the Abbé BARRUEL is to recommend new restrictions on publication. • Begin (says he, p. 557) by taking from the sect its means of delusion. Remove far from the people all these incendiary productions; and when I speak of the people, I speak of all classes of society; for I know of none inaccessible to illusion. I speak even more especially of that class which has been supposed most to abound in information.' Denouncer of vandalism! thus began those men who, after having published a catalogue of prohibited books, stretched on the funeral pyre a Palearius and a Vanini, plunged a Galileo into the dungeons of the inquisition, patronized those domestic crusades which laid waste the earliest seats of modern culture, " Rolling mother with infant down the rocks," and at length accomplished in France the infernal massacre called after the name of Saint Bartholomew!-An awful retribution has been inflicted beneath our eyes! An Appendix of fifteen pages is devoted by the Abbé to the examination of what we have already said concerning these memoirs. "Qui meprise Cotin n'estime point son roi ; The critical charge of misrendering some cited passages we still maintain; and we again confidently repeat our appeal to readers of the German tongue. The Abbé BARRUEL affects to shrug his shoulders at the idea of danger from catholicism, and of the religious ascendancy of jesuits in this country. Werefer him to a well-known and entertaining work, The Enthusiasm of the Methodists and Papists compared *; to the Bishop of Lincoln's Charge; to the notes in the Pursuits of Literature; to the notorious increase of mass-houses; to the rising convents of the sect; and to the astonishing multiplication of its petty publications. Are these imaginary transactions? Has he never heard of the justly-venerated ex-jesuit Latrobe? Mr. Wilberforce could do justice to the character of his lessons, and appears to have inherited the mantle of his piety. Is the Abbé ignorant that * See the first vol. of our Review, printed in 1749. the the Scriptural Researches into the Licitness of the Slave-trade, which paralyzed so extensively the zeal of the religious in be. half of the Negroes, was the work of a Jesuit *?-but enough; it is not our wish to become the heralds of alarm: all denun. ciations favour intolerance, though in different directions. ART. X. Oeuvres diverses de J. J. BARTHÉLEMY; i, e. The Miscellaneous Works of J. J. BARTHÉLEMY. 2 Vols. 8vo. pp. 400. Paris. 1798. Imported by De Foffe, London. Price 14s. THOUGH this edition of the posthumous works of the Abbé BARTHÉLEMY contains little, which is intrinsically and highly valuable, the name of the author confers on it an importance which will no doubt secure to it many purchasers. A life, or eulogy, is prefixed. The leading circumstances in the fortunes of this classical writer were enumerated by us on another occasion: but some additional particulars are contained in this more circumstantial narrative. In the journey to Italy, for which a salary was allotted to him in 1754, and which took place in the following year, the Abbé was presented to Benedict XIV. and was received by him with his characteristic urbanity. The antiquary Paciandi, the chronologist Corsini, the Syriac Assemanni, and the architect Piranesi, are enumerated among the acquaintance formed by the Abbé, From the manuscripts partially unrolled at Herculaneum, he preserved by memory, and transmitted to Paris, a fragment relative to the democratic revolution which excluded from the Grecian cities, or colonies, the Pythagorean philosophers.-His controversy with Dr. Swinton is narrated unfavourably to the English antiquary. - His contributions conferred on the work of Comte Caylus all its merit. - The exquisite delicacy observed by BARTHÉLEMY in some competitions for elective offices in the Academy, and his profuse but silent beneficence to various literary friends, do honour to his cultivated mind, and to his heart. In an early period of the Revolution, which his writings certainly had not contributed to resist, he foretold the literary declension of his country. "A quoi bon desormais cela? on ne s'en occupera plus; ils detruiront tout." Such were the terms in which he bewailed the systematic contempt of the new lawgivers for merely curious inquiries; and this lamentation was sufficient to provoke an accusation of aristocracy, which exposed him to a transient imprisonment, speedily and *Harris, by name. Essay on the Life of Barthélemy, by the late Duke de Nivernois. See Rev. vol. xviii. N. S. p. 558. -honourably honourably terminated by an express interference of the legis lative body. Yet so little did he ascribe the evils and immo rality of his countrymen to their antichristian fanaticism, that he said: The revolution was ill named; it ought to be called a revelation. Of the pieces comprehended in this collection, the first is a Moral Treatise founded on a passage of Xenophon, which describes the laws of the Persians as punishing those who offend against their gods, their parents, their country, or their friends. It recommends ecclesiastical and filial piety, and patriotic and social fidelity. : The next is a novel of no great interest, of which the fable is Grecian, intitled Charite & Polydore. There is reason for suspecting that this was the exercise of a noble pupil, merely corrected and improved by the Abbé. The third paper is a short burlesque epopea in three cantos, narrating the Wars of the Fleas against his patrons in the magnificent state-rooms of Chanteloupe. It is written in the spirit of the Batrachomyomachia, and in rhime, and is superscribed la Chanteloupée. The conquered insects were not humanely destroyed. The remainder of the volume consists of a collection of various antiquarian articles, drawn up by BARTHÉLEMY for the Journal des Sçavans. These critical analyses are introduced by an ingenious preface; which maintains that, of our extant literature, literary journals alone will be consulted by posterity, and will be supposed to have preserved the cream of the publications of the times, far too immense for future consultation. Sallo, Bayle, Basnage, Le Clerc, and Fontenelle, are praised for having founded and excelled in the art of reviewing. The leading European annals of literature are also enumerated; among which a distinguished place is politely assigned to the Monthly Review. The articles here reprinted are seven in number, and are those few which respect or involve points of contro versy between the Abbé and other antiquaries: many more flowed from his pen, which display equal sagacity and erudition. The Second Volume opens with a dissertation on the distribution of booty among the antients; in a letter to a member of the British parliament, Mr. Stanley. This gentleman had written to the Abbé for his opinion of the usage of nations in this respect under the civil law, at a time when the House of Commons was inclined to interfere with the fortunes acquired by certain nabobs. The letter transmits, seemingly, the first part only of a dissertation, consisting originally of three parts; which appear all to have reached England; as Mr. Stanley; in a letter of the 24th Dec. 1773, expresses his satisfaction |