is fortunately an institution among us which is termed the
British Museum, and it enables us to verify questions of this kind.
Furthermore, when describing the Palladian meeting at the Presbyterian
chapel--there was such a chapel by the way--he tells us that the Grand
Master was named Spencer, and that he was a _negociant_ of Singapore,
but there was again no such person in the town or its vicinity at the
time, and so his entire narrative, with its ritual reproduced from Leo
Taxil, is demolished completely. I submit that these two instances are
sufficient to indicate the kind of man with whom we are dealing. It may
be a matter of astonishment to my readers that a work even of imposition
should be performed so clumsily as to betray itself at once to a little
easy research, but it must be remembered that the class of French
readers to whom Dr Bataille made appeal are so ignorant of all which
concerns the English that skill is not required to exploit them; it is
enough that the English are abused. Of our author's qualifications in
this respect I have already given some specimens, but they convey no
idea of his actual resources in the matter of abuse and calumny. A
direct quotation will not be beside the purpose in this
place:--"Wheresoever religious influence can make itself felt, there
the wife and maid are the purest, the most ingenuous expression of the
creation and the divinely touching idea synthetised by the immaculate
Mother of Christ, the Virgin Mary; but, on the contrary, in England, and
still more especially in the English colonies, under the pernicious
influence of the Protestant heresy engendered by revolts of truly
diabolical inspiration, the wife and maid are in some sort the
opprobrium of humanity. The example, moreover, comes from an exalted
place, as is known. The whole world is acquainted with that which John
Bull does not himself confess, namely, the private history of her whom
Indians term 'the old lady of London,' given over to vice and
drunkenness from her youth--Her Majesty Wisky the 1st." I have made this
quotation, because it gives the opportunity to dispense with the
civility of discussion which is exercised by one gentleman towards
another, but would be out of place on the part of a gentleman who is
giving a deserved castigation to a disgusting and foul-mouthed rascal.
This is the nameless refuse which flings itself to bespatter Masonry.
Down, unclean dog, and back, scavenger, to your offal! The s