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Stephen's, on the hustings or elsewhere, was it that brought this Shakespeare into being? No dining at Freemasons' Tavern, opening subscription-lists, selling of shares, and infinite other jangling and true or false endeavouring! This Elizabethan Era, and all its nobleness and blessedness, came without proclamation, preparation of ours.

Are these men not hand and glove with the clerical party, which hates England as heretic and excommunicate? It is not proposed by Home Rule to put in office men who are the mere tools of the Catholic church, the most unyielding and intolerant system in the world!" I remembered the leader in the Irish Catholic, which sings a pæan of triumph over alleged successes against the Freemasons of Italy.

It might have been expected that a foreign minister would have repelled such an accusation with indignation. Poinsett, on the contrary, in a letter addressed to the public, admitted that he had been instrumental in establishing five such secret societies, but asserted that they were only lodges of Freemasons, merely philanthropic institutions, which had nothing to do with politics.

His mysterious disappearance was laid at the doors of leading Freemasons; and it was alleged that members of this order placed their secret obligations above their duties as citizens and were hence unfit for public office. The movement became impressive in Pennsylvania, Vermont, Massachusetts, Ohio, and New York. It served to introduce Seward and Fillmore into politics.

The curate then demanded what religion he professed? and whether he was a Mohometan, or freemason? and received for answer that he was a Roman Catholic. I must here state, that Victoriano, though sufficiently shrewd in his way, was a poor old labourer of sixty- four; and until that moment had never heard either of Mahometans or freemasons.

And, on the other hand, we see throughout all our ancient regulations, that a marked distinction was made by our rulers between the Freemason and the Mason who was not free; as, for instance, in the conclusion of the fifth chapter of the Ancient Charges, where it is said: "No laborer shall be employed in the common work of Masonry, nor shall Freemasons work with those who are not free, without an urgent necessity."

And, to mention another case, there is the gentleman who is returning home late at night, from a Freemasons' dinner, and who, noticing a light issuing from a ruined abbey, creeps up, and looks through the keyhole.

At the same time he felt that the deeper the ground sank under him the closer bound he involuntarily became to the order. When he had joined the Freemasons he had experienced the feeling of one who confidently steps onto the smooth surface of a bog. When he put his foot down it sank in.

It was at a dinner of the Literary Fund, in that vast apartment which is hung round with the portraits of very large Royal Freemasons, now unsubstantial ghosts. There at the end of the room was Hood. Some publishers, I think, were our companions. I quite remember his pale face; he was thin and deaf, and very silent; he scarcely opened his lips during the dinner, and he made one pun.

She lived long enough to repent and to reassert, to some extent, her lost matronly dignity, but she died very young let us hope in fair course of nature. She had violated the first law of a guild more numerous and influential than that of the Freemasons. Examples are necessary from time to time, and, though the Vehme-gericht may pity the offender, it may not therefore linger in its vengeance.