buried amidst the ruins of thrones and altars, the horrors of anarchy, the wreck of national happiness, and the universal execration of mankind. END OF BOOK I. BOOK II. _Establishment of the Order of the Assassins, and Reign of the first Grand Master, Hassan Sabah._ Egypt, that extraordinary country, so distinguished from all others by the many wonderful phenomena of nature, has ever been in history the memorable theatre of extraordinary exhibitions of the art of governing mankind by wisdom or folly in the name of heaven or earth. In the remote ages of antiquity reigned a caste of priests, in whose hands the king was the servile tool of their power, the lituus (our present bishop’s crosier) was the real sceptre. Superstition, and the external worship of statues and pictures, was the religion of the people, while the secret doctrine of the initiated was concealed under symbols and hieroglyphics. Their mysteries had a particular relation to the state of the soul after death; whereas the popular belief confined its duration to that of its earthly existence. It was a deeply designed but ill-calculated policy, which excluded from the doctrine of immortality the multitude who cleave to the clod, and made it the peculiar prerogative of a certain number of elect, to whom it was permitted to soar beyond the limits of the tomb, without at the same time neglecting the duties and objects of civil life. It was imagined, that the vulgar could only fulfil them with all their energies, and to their full extent, when, instead of being actuated by views extending beyond the grave, they confine to earth the whole activity and faculty of their mind, during the space of time which intervenes between the cradle and the coffin. Thus, neither time nor vigour would be lost in vain hopes or useless speculations; every application of them was devoted to civil existence: this was the object of the state, which reserved to itself the allotment of rewards and punishments, not only here but hereafter. In order to satisfy, in some measure, that longing after continued existence implanted by nature in every breast, though deriving little support from reason, the people sought to preserve their bodies and names for the longest possible period, by mummies and tombs: hence those mighty monuments, and the secret judgment of the dead, in which the priests, as assessors and judges, were the dispensers of this transitory immortality of stone and dust. To the few better informed, and who were not satisfied with this mummery, the judgment of the dead was symbolically explained in the mysteries, and the real immortality of the soul taught; and explanations were afforded by the priests of subjects of which they were themselves entirely ignorant.