These Lodges were frequented by persons of all ranks, and of every profession. The idle and the frivolous found amusement, and glittering things to tickle their satiated fancies. There they became the dupes of the declamations of the crafty and licentious Abbés, and writers of every denomination. Mutual encouragement in the indulgence of hazardous thoughts and opinions which flatter our wishes or propensities is a lure which few minds can resist. I believe that most men have felt this in some period of their lives. I can find no other way of accounting for the company that I have sometimes seen in a Mason Lodge. The Lodge _de la Parfaite Intelligence_ at Liege, contained, in December 1770, the Prince Bishop, and the greatest part of his Chapter, and all the Office-bearers were dignitaries of the church; yet a discourse given by the Brother Orator was as poignant a satire on superstition and credulity, as if it had been written by Voltaire. It was under the auspices of this Lodge that the collection of discourses, which I mentioned above, was published, and there is no fault found with Brother Robinet, nor Brother Condorcet. Indeed the Trefonciers of Liege were proverbial, even in Brabant, for their Epicurism in the most extensive sense of the word. Thus was corruption spread over the kingdom under the mask of moral instruction. For these discourses were full of the most refined and strained morality, and florid paintings of Utopian felicity, in a state where all are Brothers and citizens of the world. But alas! these wire-drawn principles seem to have had little influence on the hearts, even of those who could best display their beauties. Read the tragedies of Voltaire, and some of his grave performances in prose--What man is there who seems better to know his Master's will? No man expresses with more propriety, with more exactness, the feelings of a good mind. No man seems more sensible of the immutable obligation of justice and of truth. Yet this man, in his transactions with his booksellers, with the very men to whom he was immediately indebted for his affluence and his fame, was repeatedly, nay incessantly, guilty of the meanest, the vilest tricks. When he sold a work for an enormous price to one bookseller, (even to Cramer, whom he really respected,) he took care that a surreptitious edition should appear in Holland, almost at the same moment. Proof-sheets have been traced from Ferney to Amsterdam. When a friend of Cramer's expostulated with Voltaire on the injustice of this conduct, he said, grinning, _Oh le bon Cramer--eh bien--il_ _n'a que d' etre du parti_--he may take a share--he will not give me a livre the less for the first piece I offer him. Where shall we see more tenderness, more honour, more love of every thing that is good and fair, than in Diderot's _Pere de Famille_?--Yet this man did not scruple to sell to the Empress of Russia an immense library, which he did not possess, for an enormous price, having