This discovery was immediately announced to the public, in an anonymous publication in defence of Dr. Stark. It is supposed to be his own performance. It discloses a scene of complicated villiany and folly, in which the Lady in Courland makes a very strange figure. She appears to be a wild fanatic, deeply engaged in magic and ghost-raising, and leagued with Nicholai, Gedicke, and Biester, against Dr. Stark. He is very completely cleared of the facts alledged against him; and his three male opponents appear void of all principle and enemies of all religion. Stark however would, in Britain, be a very singular character, considered as a clergyman. The frivolous secrets of Masonry have either engrossed his whole mind, or he has laboured in them as a lucrative trade, by which he took advantage of the folly of others. The contest between Stark and the Triumvirate at Berlin engaged the public attention much more than we should imagine that a thing of so private a nature would do. But the characters were very notorious; and it turned the attention of the public to those clandestine attacks which were made in every quarter on the civil and religious establishments. It was obvious to every person, that these reading societies had all on a sudden become very numerous; and the characters of those who patronised them only increased the suspicions which were now raised.
The first work that speaks expressly of the German Union, is a very sensible performance "On the Right of Princes to direct the Religion of their Subjects." The next is a curious work, a sort of narrative Dialogue on the Characters of Nicholai, Gedicke, and Biester. It is chiefly occupied with the contest with Dr. Stark, but in the 5th part, it treats particularly of the German Union.
About the same time appeared some farther account, in a book called Archives of Fanaticism and Illuminatism. But all these accounts are very vague and unsatisfactory. The fullest account is to be had in a work published at Leipzig by Goschen the bookseller. It is entitled, "More Notes than Text, or the German Union of XXII, a new Secret Society for