Alvira: The Heroine of Vesuvius

ret Soc

rks of benevolence. That such is the belief of many individuals in the lower grades of Masonry, and even of some lodges amongst the thousands scattered over the face of the earth, we hav

he brethren standing around in attitudes denoting grief and sorrow, the mysterious official who has the privileg

greatest secrecy as to these signs and words. Three of the fellow-crafts, wishing to know the word of the master, and by that means obtain his salary, hid themselves in the temple, and each posted himself at a different gate. At the usual time when Adoniram came to shut the gates of the temple, the first of the three fellow-crafts met him, and demanded the word of the mast

scovers a corpse, ad, taking it by the finger, the finger parts from the hand; he takes it by the wrist, and it parts from the arm;

egree which he has just received is to recover the word lost by the

blood that his would-be avengers have caused to flow have not satiated this blood-thirsty shade, those that Masons, Communists, I

hese were pagan orgies attached to some Grecian temples. Surrounded by mysterious ceremonies and symbols, and supported by ever

n those occasions, they afforded consoling promises of a better futurity. 'Happy is the mortal,' it is said there, 'who hath been able to contemplate these grand

e immoralities of pagan worship. But to give such a remote, and even such a noble, origin to the fr

and stupendous work of architectural beauty, called around him other noted men from the different cities of Germany, Switzerland, and France; he formed the first lodge. The members became deputies for the formation of lodges in other cities, an

according to the degrees they had attained. They adopted for symbols the square, the level, the compass, and the hammer. In some lodges and in higher grades (for they differ almost in every nation) we find the Bible, compass, and square only. But the Bible given to the aspirant he is to understand he is to acknowledge no other law but that of Adam-the law which Almighty god had engr

st the lugubrious ceremonies the aspirant has to pass elicit a smile-such, for instance, of leading the young Mason with bandaged eyes around the inner temple, and in the higher grades presenting him with a dagger, which he is to plunge into a manikin stuffed with bladders full of blood,

e off the control of all religion, and pretend to be in possession of a secret to make men better and happier than Christ,

ow does this justify the Mason, in the midday effulgence of Christianity, in telling mankind he has a wonderful secret for advancing them in virtue and happiness-a secret unknown to the incarnate God, and to the Church with which he has promised the Paraclete sho

zabeth; they were checked in France by Louis XV. (1729); they were prescribed in Holland in 1735, and successively in Flanders, in Sweden, in Poland, in Spain, in Portugal, in Hungary, and in Switzerland. In Vienna, in 1743, a lodge was burst into by soldiers. The Freemasons had to give up their swords and were conducted to prison; but as there were personages of high rank among them, they were let free on parole and their assemblies finally prohibited. These facts

tter than frivolous, very frivolous indeed. The distribution of charity needs to be no secret, and it is but a small part of the employment of the meeting. Mere frivolity c

ights in mysterious conclave. Fancy can paint the scene: weak-minded men of every shade of unbelief, men of dishonest and immoral sentiments, men who, if justice had her due, should have swung on the gallows or eked out a miserable existence in some criminal's cell, joined in league to trample on the laws and constitution of order, and, in the awful callousness of intoxication, uttering every blasphemous and improper thought the evil one could suggest. What must have been the

o verses from a parody on a very popular American song. We believe the lines representing the poor little child calling in the middle of the night, in the col

father, stop h

stop home

lodge' or 'lodge

ot home ple

s benevolence i

rts would yie

take up so muc

u from home

ather, stop hom

's deserted

your absence one

to your lodg

ed collar came

y cheeks, co

I was a good

ing, dear fa

father, come h

before hal

ome soon, with a f

father dear

old, for the fir

to bed ha

he very last wor

se Freemaso