for neither the uniform nor the trumpery were allowed,—but Monk, or Friar or Jesuit in lay-clothing, employed in secretly administering to the then decreasing numbers of their own communion, and recruiting them whenever they safely could; but more generally venturing no farther than to insinuate doubts, and unsettle the belief, of unwary and unlearned members of the established religion, for this could always be done with impunity. And in this they aided, and were aided by, those who in that age were known by the name, which they had arrogated to themselves, of Free-thinkers. There was among the higher classes in those days a fashion of infidelity, imported from France; Shaftesbury and “the cankered Bolingbroke” (as Sir Robert Walpole used justly to call that profligate statesman), were beholden for their reputation more to this, than to any solidity of talents, or grace of style. It had made much less way in middle life than in the higher and lower ranks; for men in middle life, being generally trained up when children in the way they should go, were less likely to depart from it than those who were either above or below them in station; indeed they were not exposed to the same dangers. The principles which were veiled, but not disguised, by Lord Chesterfield and Horace Walpole, and exposed in their nakedness by Wilkes and his blasphemous associates at their orgies, were discussed in the Robin Hood Society, by men who were upon the same level with the holders-forth at the Rotunda in our own times, but who differed from them in these respects, that they neither made a trading profession of impiety, nor ventured into the treason-line.