singular opinions, and the delight which attends their favourable reception. None are more zealous than the apostles of infidelity and atheism. It is in human nature to catch with greediness any opportunity of doing what lies under general restraint. And if our apprehensions are not completely quieted, in a case where our wishes lead us strongly to some favourite but hazardous object, we are conscious of a kind of self bullying. This naturally gets into our discourse, and in our eagerness to get the encouragement of joint adventurers, we enforce our tenets with an energy, and even a violence, that is very inconsistent with the subject in hand. If I am an Atheist, and my neighbour a Theist, there is surely nothing that should make me violent in my endeavours to rid him of his error. Yet how violent were the people of this party in France. These facts and observations fully account for the zeal with which all this patch-work addition to the simple Free Masonry of England was prosecuted in France. It surprises us Britons, who are accustomed to consider the whole as a matter of amusement for young men, who are glad of any pretext for indulging in conviviality. We generally consider a man advanced in life with less respect, if he shows any serious attachment to such things. But in France, the civil and religious restraints in conversation made these secret assemblies very precious; and they were much frequented by men of letters, who there found an opportunity of expressing in safety their dissatisfaction with those restraints, and with that inferiority of rank and condition to which they were subjected, and which appeared to themselves so inadequate to their own talents and merits. The _Avocats au Parlement_, the unbeneficed Abbés, the young men of no fortune, and the _soidisant_ philosophers, formed a numerous band, frequented the Lodges, and there discussed every topic of religion and politics. Specimens of this occupation appeared from time to time in Collections of Discourses delivered by the _Frere Orateur_. I once had in my possession two volumes of these discourses, which I now regret that I left in a Lodge on the continent, when my relish for Free Masonry had forsaken me. One of these is a discourse by Brother Robinet, delivered in the _Loge des Chevaliers Bienfaisants de la Sainte Cité_ at Lyons, at a visitation by the Grand Master the _Duc de Chartres_, afterwards _Orleans_ and _Egalité_. In this discourse we have the germ and substance of his noted work, _La Nature, ou l'Homme moral et physique_.[1] In another discourse, delivered by Brother Condorcet in the _Loge des Philalethes_ at Strasbourg, we have the outlines of his posthumous work, _Le Progres de l'Esprit humain_; and in another, delivered by Mirabeau in the _Loge des Chevaliers Bienfaisants_ at Paris, we have a great deal of the levelling principles, and cosmopolitism,[2] which he thundered from the tribunes of the National Assembly. But