there were secret esoteric classes which, so far from entering and learning experimentally to appreciate, Mr. Joe had not suspected to exist. Knaves never passed into those rooms. A second reason which diminished the risk was that, undoubtedly, under the mask of scholastic disputation, the student was exercised in hearing all the arguments that were most searchingly profound in behalf of Christ's Messiahship. No danger would attend this: it was necessary, were it only for polemic discipline and gymnastics; so that it always admitted of a double explanation, reconcilable alike with the true end that was dissembled, and with the false end that was simulated. But, though used only as a passage of practice and skill, such a scene furnished means at once to the Christian teachers in disguise for observing the degrees in which different minds melted or froze before the evidence for Christ as the true Messiah. There again arose fresh aids to a safe selection. And, finally, whilst the institution of the Essenes was thus accomplishing its primary mission of training up a succession to a Church which durst not show its face to the world or avow its own existence, and thus was providing concurrently for the future growth of that Church, it was also in a secondary way providing for the secret meeting of the Church, and for its present consolation.

SUPPLEMENT ON THE ESSENES1

At this point, reader, we have come to a sudden close. The paper, or (according to the phraseology of modern journals) the article, has reached its terminus. And a very abrupt terminus it seems. Such even to myself it seems; much more, therefore, in all probability, to the reader. But I

1 This supplement was added by De Quincey in 1857 when he revised his paper on Secret Societies (originally in Tait's Magazine for August and October 1847) for inclusion in Vol. VII of his Collected Writings. He thought he had not said enough about the Essenes in his paper, or made his speculations about them sufficiently clear: hence the supplement. It is to be remembered that his special Blackwood article of 1840 on the Essenes, which in our present volume precedes this Tait paper on Secret Societies generally, had not yet been overtaken by De Quincey in his revisions for the Collective Edition. In fact, it was not reprinted till 1859, when De Quincey had got as far as Vol. X of that edition. Hence the jocular strain in the opening of this supplement, by way of excuse for writing it. "Instead "of saying anything more about the Essenes here," he is supposed to be muttering to himself, "might I not refer to my previous Blackwood "article on the subject? But, by the bye, is there such an article? "Who knows? I have some recollection of such a thing; but, again, "I may be wrong. What do I know about what papers I have "written, or where they are? They know all about it in Boston; "where they have collected all my papers and are reprinting them in 66 an American Collective Edition. Perhaps, indeed, they have already "reprinted that Blackwood paper on the Essenes, if there ever was "such a paper. Possible enough; but, at all events, I have not come "to it yet for my own Edinburgh Collective Edition, and cannot "assume its existence. No reason therefore why I should not, here and now, have another fling at Josephus and his precious Essenes in a supplement to my general paper on Secret Societies. The subject "will bear as much additional hammering as I can give it, the rather "because my previous hammering has not been voted perfectly

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believe that we must look for the true cause of this abruptness, and the natural remedy of the anger incident to so unexpected a disappointment, in the records of my own literary movements some twenty-five or thirty years back -at which time this little paper was written. It is possible that I may, concurrently (or nearly so) with this "article," have written some other "article" expressly and separately on the Essenes-leaving, therefore, to that the elucidation of any obscurities as to them which inay have gathered in this paper on "Secret Societies." And, now I think of it, my belief begins to boil up fervently that I did so. "How? Possible that I may have written such an article? Don't I know?" Candidly, I do not. "In that case, who does?" Why, perhaps one of the three following New England StatesMassachusetts, or Connecticut, or Rhode Island. If anybody, insular or continental, is likely to know anything whatever in the concern, it is one of these illustrious communities. But such is the extent of my geographical ignorance that I am profoundly ignorant in which of the three states it is proper to look for the city of Boston, though I know to a nicety in which of the three it is not. Rhode Island, I am positive, does not grow any huge city, unless, like Jonah's gourd, it has rushed into life by one night's growth. So that I have eliminated one quantity at least from the algebraic problem; which must, therefore, be in a very hopeful state towards solution. Boston, meantime, it is, wheresoever that Boston may ultimately be found, which (or more civilly, perhaps, who) keeps all my accounts of papers and "paperasses" (to borrow a very useful French word), all my MSS., finished books-past, present, or to come-tried at the public bar, or to be tried ; condemned, or only condemnable. It is astonishing how much more Boston knows of my literary acts and purposes than I do myself. Were it not indeed through Boston, "satisfactory." All this (which is but a translation into editorial terms of the opening paragraph of the supplement) is, of course, only De Quincey's rigmarole way of excusing himself for his obstinacy in again taking the public by the throat on a favourite subject. It must serve here also, the Blackwood article on the Essenes having necessarily preceded the Tait paper on Secret Societies in our arrangement, as an excuse for the repetitions of ideas and arguments from the earlier paper which will be found in the later.-M.

hardly the sixth part of my literary undertakings, hurried or deliberate, sound, rotting, or rotten, would ever have reached posterity which, be it known to thee, most sarcastic of future censors, already most of them have reached. For surely to an "article" composed in 18211 a corpulent reader of 1858 is posterity in a most substantial sense. Everything, in short, relating to myself is in the keeping of Boston: and, were it not that the kindness of society in Boston is as notorious to us in England as her intellectual distinction and her high literary rank among cities, I should fear at times that, if on any dark December morning, say forty or fifty years ago, I might have committed a forgery (as the best of men will do occasionally), Boston could array against me all the documentary evidence of my peccadillo (such it is now esteemed) before I could have time to abscond. But, if such a forgery exists, I rely on her indulgent sympathy with literary men for allowing me six hours' law (as we of old England call it). This little arrangement, however, is private business, not meant for public ears. Returning to general concerns, I am sure that Boston will know whether anywhere or anywhen I have or have not written a separate "article" on the Essenes. Meantime, as the magnetic cable is not yet laid down across the flooring of the Atlantic, and that an exchange of question and answer between myself and my friends Messrs Ticknor, Fields, & Co., will require an extra month of time (of "irreparabile tempus"), I will suppose myself not to have written such a paper; and, in that case of so faulty an omission, will hold himself debtor, and will on the spot discharge my debt, for a few preliminary explanations that ought to have been made already upon a problem which very few men of letters have had any special motive for investigating. Let me quicken the reader's interest in the question at issue by warning him of two important facts: viz.—

First, that the Church of Rome, in the persons of some amongst her greatest scholars, has repeatedly made known her dissatisfaction with the romance of Josephus. It is dimly

1 This looks like an intimation that the Blackwood article on the Essenes, though not published till 1840, existed, in draft at least, nineteen years earlier, viz. in the Grasmere days.-M.

apparent that, so far as she had been able to see her way, this most learned Church had found cause to adopt the same conclusion practically as myself—viz. that under some course of masquerading, hard to decipher, the Essenes were neither more nor less than Early Christians.

But, secondly, although evidently aware that the account of the Essenes by Josephus was, and must have been, an intolerable romance, she had failed to detect the fraudulent motive of Josephus underlying that elaborate fiction; or the fraudulent tactics by which, throughout that fiction, he had conducted his warfare against the Christians; or the countersystem of tactics by which, were it only for immediate safety, but also with a separate view to self-propagation and continual proselytism, the infant Christian Church must have fought under a mask against Josephus and his army of partisans in Jerusalem. It is inexplicable to me how the Church of Rome could for one moment overlook the fierce internecine hostility borne by the Jewish national faction to the Christians, and doubtless most of all to the Judaising Christians; of whom, as we know, there were some eminent champions amongst the Christian apostles themselves. Good reason the Jew bigot really had for hating, persecuting, and calumniating the Christian revolutionist more rancorously even than the Roman avowed enemy. How stood the separate purposes of these two embattled antagonists: first, Rome Imperial; secondly, the new-born sect of Christians? Of these two armies by far the deadliest was the last. Rome fought against the Jewish nation simply as a little faction, mad with arrogance, that would not by any milder chastisement be taught to know its own place; and the captives netted in the great haul at Jerusalem, being looked upon not as honourable prisoners of war, but as rebels-obstinate and incorrigible-were consigned to the stone-quarries of Upper Egypt a sort of dungeons in which a threefold advantage was gained to the Roman-viz. 1, that the unhappy captives were held up to the nations as monuments of the ruin consequent on resistance to Rome; 2, were made profitable to the general exchequer; 3, were watched and guarded at a cost unusually trivial. But Rome, though stern and harsh, was uniform in her policy, never capricious, and habitually