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The reception and acceptance by British conservatives of the conspiracy theory of the French Revolution, as propounded by the Abbe Augustin de Barruel and Professor John Robison, has often been underplayed. This article seeks to correct that historiographical oversight by demonstrating the remarkable and unremarked extent to which the conspiracy theory of the Illuminati and the philosophes took root in the 1790s, then to explain that popularity, and finally to examine how acceptance of the conspiracy theory encouraged the development of an intellectual exceptionalism which had significant consequences for British attitudes towards continental philosophy, particularly that of Immanuel Kant.

THAT WOMEN HAVE THE TALENTSand therefore should have the right-to participate fully in domains traditionally reserved to the opposite sex was a notion treated gingerly by French writers of prose fiction during the eighteenth century. The audacity of the abbe Desfontaines, who introduced into his Nouveau Gulliver (1730) the isle of Babilary, is undeniable. For at a certain moment in the country's history, the men had abdicated all responsibility for serious pursuits; and the women quickly took advantage of their "honteuse mollesse ... pour secouier le joug, que la sagesse des premiers tems leur avoit justement impose, et que la foiblesse du sexe dominant avoit depuis rendu trop leger."I As the mildly disapproving hero observes, women now occupy all posts in the government, the church, and the army; they devote themselves to the sciences and the arts. The men, reduced to social playthings, gossip, adorn themselves, and defend their virtue against their sexually aggressive countrywomen. The order and sta

IN JUNE 1695, the young abbe Jean-Baptiste Dubos was pondering a phenomenon that had long before and would long afterward puzzle critics of the arts and observers of public taste-the grand success of a patently inferior work. How, Dubos wondered, could one explain the "prodigious success" of Demarest's Didon, an opera which, in fact, was not only intrinsically weak according to the most commonly accepted esthetic standards, but, in addition, had been presented by a second-rate cast in a second-rate performance that had been universally panned by the critics?' His early disdain of public esthetic judgments notwithstanding, Dubos would have occasion many times to reconsider how and how well the public judged. He would do so not only in his capacity as an art critic, but also as an erudit and historian, whose remarkable talents, works, and dedication to the royalist cause mark him as one

L'Abbe Mallet (1755) a ecrit un grand nombre d'articles de l'Encyclopedie. Une analyse de quelques uns (Arche de Noe, Revocation de l'Edit de Nantes, Bulle Unigenitus, Anabaptistes etc.) montre que Mallet etait en fait un esprit foncierement reactionnaire. Son entree dans l'equipe de d'Alembert a ete due a ses amities en haut lieu. Dans l'edition de l'Encyclopedie parue apres sa mort, ses articles ont ete censures et arranges dans un esprit plus conforme a celui des Encyclopedistes.

ABBE GEORG JOSEPH VOGLER (1749-1814) remains as much an enigma in our day as he was a subject of controversy in his own. Our chronicles preserve the image of a perplexing theoretician, a successful composer of church and theater music, a virtuoso of perishable fame whose path crossed Mozart's and Beethoven's, and a teacher of unknown merit whose pupils included Carl Maria von Weber and Giacomo Meyerbeer. This shadowy picture stands in contrast to the flamboyance of contemporary accounts-especially Vogler's own-that illuminate the exploits of an intrepid reformer, a zealot for the cause of enlightenment, and a stormer of the bastions of central European conservatism. I What are we to make of the redoubtable abbe, whose many-sided endeavors in the realms of theory, pedagogy, performance, and composition would inspire both unrelenting scorn from his enemies and the unreserved devotion of his disciples, yet whose memory would fade so quickly from the consciousness of later generations? Vogler was certainly not remiss in promoting himself and his ideas. Occupied with teaching for most of his career, he established music schools at Mannheim and Stockholm, lectured in the university at Prague, and presided over an illustrious gathering of pupils at Darmstadt in his later years. An intermittent stream of published writings, mostly by-products of these teaching experiences, served to spread enlightenment in wider circles by explaining the master's theories, offering model critiques of his own music, and demonstrating the application of his principles through Verbesserungen [improved versions] of other composers' works. But

IN 1768, THREE YEARS after the publication of the last of the seventeen letterpress volumes of the Encyclopedie, Diderot expressed strong regret that the contributors to the work had not been selected carefully: "In addition to some excellent people, there were others who were weak, mediocre, and totally incompetent. A jumbled work resulted, where a schoolboy's rough draft is found next to a masterpiece, a stupidity alongside something sublime, a page written with force, purity, passion, judgment, reason, and elegance on the back of a page that is poor, trivial, dull, and wretched.""' But was Diderot correct-was the manner of recruitment one of the most serious faults of the enterprise? It is difficult to say for certain, because we lack evidence about how every one of the 140 or so contributors came to write for the Encyclopedie. Still, an examination of the history of the publication and of the lives of the Encyclopedists does reveal certain patterns in the recruitment and thus permits some reflections on its weaknesses and strengths. When the project was launched in 1745, the burden of recruitment largely rested with its four publishers, Andre-Francois Le Breton, Michel-Antoine David, Laurent Durand, and Antoine-Claude Briasson, and with the scholar they first selected as its editor, the abbe Jean-Paul de Gua de Malves. Sometimes Gua de Malves's friends or acquaintances, like the anatomist Pierre Tarin, were asked to help.2 Other times contributors were chosen from the publishers' "stables": Jean Le Rond d'Alembert, three of whose books were published by David from 1743 to 1747; and Denis Diderot, who in the 1740s had books published by Durand and Briasson as well as by David. One of these works, a six-volume French translation of Robert James's Medicinal Dictionary, was undertaken by Diderot and by two other