cond chapter, it is obvious that Miss
Vaughan is a witness of the first importance as to whether there is a
Masonry behind Masonry, which, more or less, manages, or attempts to
manage, the entire society, unknown to the rank and file of its
initiates, however high in grade; as to whether its seat is at
Charleston, with Albert Pike for its founder, and as to whether its
doctrine is anti-Christian, and its cultus that of Lucifer, supported by
magical wonders, concerned with sacrilegious observances, and either a
disguised Satanism, or drifting in that direction. As already hinted,
the mythical and miraculous element,--in a word, that portion of Doctor
Bataille's narrative which does violence to sense and reason,--Miss
Vaughan has not at present imperilled her position by substantiating,
but as to the points I have enumerated, she has most distinctly come
forth out of Palladism to tell us that these things are so, and to
reinforce what was previously stated by unveiling her private life.

It is therefore my duty and desire to do her full justice, and with this
purpose in view, I propose to recite briefly the chief heads of her
memoir, so far as it has been published up to date. I must, however,
premise at the beginning that she does not come before us with one trace
of the uncertainty of accent which might have been expected to
characterise the newly-acquired language, not merely of Christian
faith, but of its Roman dialect. We find her speaking at once, and to
the manner born. Could anything, by possibility, be narrower than
certain perished sections of evangelical religion in England, it would
be certain sections of ultramontane religion in France; but Miss Vaughan
has acquired all the terminology of the latter, all the intellectual
bitterness, all the fatuities, as one might say, in the space of five
minutes. When she has wearied of her memoirs at the moment, or has
reached, after the manner of the novelist, some crucial point in her
narrative, she breaks off abruptly, brackets _a suivre_, and proceeds to
an account of the latest wonder-working image, or a diatribe against
spirit manifestations in the typical manner of the French clerical
press. To be brief, Miss Vaughan has adopted, body and soul, precisely
those abuses which Catholics of intelligence earnestly desire to see
expunged from their great religion. She has probably never heard of the
Forged Decretals, but she would defend their authenticity if she had;
she