Page:The Martyrdom of Man 1910.djvu/13

Rh of the University life of the time, the facilities it offered to undergraduates for getting into debt with the disabilities that this imposes upon them in after life, and the useless and perfunctory character of the studies enforced upon them. In the course of this book, the author describes his initiation into Freemasonry, and this probably led him to produce, the year after the publication of Liberty Hall, The Veil of Isis, a work in which he first shows signs of the anti-clerical tendency which was to give so much colour to the speculations of his maturer years. In form, The Veil of Isis is a history of the Druids, to compile which the author raked together, without much exercise of the critical faculty, all the scanty information to be gathered from classical writers such as Cæsar, Tacitus, and Ammianus Marcellinus: but its real purpose is probably shown in the Fourth Book, in which he states his conviction that the leading principles of Druidism have been continued and survive in the ceremonies and ritual of Freemasonry. With this he thought fit to couple much abuse of the High Church party in the Church of England, whom he described in words sounding oddly enough to modern ears, as—"false vipers who, warmed and cherished in the bosom of this gentle church, use their increasing strength in darting black poison through all her veins. They wish to transmit to our church those papist emblems and imagery, those ceremonies and customs which are harmless in themselves, but which by nourishing superstition elevate the dangerous power of the priests."

These three works were all very badly received by the Press, the leading literary journals being especially