Contents.

CONTENTS .

LBADKRS 359 provincial Grand Lodqe of Suffolk 300 provincial Grand Mark Lodge of Cumberland and Westmorland 361 Provincial Grand Lodge cf Monmouthshire 361 The Prince of Wales and the Leed . s Hrethren 361 Mark Benevolent Fund .. 362 C

ORRESPONDENCEThe Recent Boys'School Festival 364 Which shall ' it be— "Charity" or "' Dinners ? " 36 4 The Masonic Chanties 36 4 London Mutual Masonic Voting Association 365 District Grand Lodges for London 365 Re aMasonic Exchange and Sale Column in the Freemason 3 <> 5 Masonic Poetrv 3 f ><

Notes and Queries 365 REPORTS OP MASONIC MEETINGSCraft Masonry 367 Instruction 307 Royal Arch 3 ft 7 Ancient and Accepted Rite 36 S Rosicrucian Society 3 ° rT Sonth Africa 36 9

Masonic Charity in West Lancashire 3 ( 19 The Sunderland Masonic Club Excursion 369 Summer Excursion of the Hundred of Elloe Lodge , No . 4 60 3 6 9 The Quebec Difficulty 369 Opening of New Masonic Rooms at East Grinstead i ^ q The Theatres 36 9 Masonic and General Tidings 370 Lodqe Meetings for Next Week iii .

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THE adjourned meeting of members favourable to the formation of a Northern Counties Lodge took place on Thursday , at I 6 A , Great Queenstreet . The meeting was adjourned till Thursday week at 3 , to fill up the list of founders and elect officers , and sign the petition .

* * * IT has sometimes occurred to us how strangely and grotesquely , to say the truth , prejudices still linger in the profane world against Freemasons and Freemasonry . Whether it be that the old theory is true , only throw

sufficient dirt upon persons or things , and a portion of it , at any rate , must stick , or whether it be the fault of Freemasons themselves , we know not , but prejudices , however perverse , are long-lived , and are difficult to eschew , and harder still to consign to oblivion . Not a very long time ago an excited Frenchman at Swansea declared that he had been robbed and

illtreated by certain " Freemasons , who turned out to be " gipsies , though probably the illtreatment and robbery only existed in the heated imagination of this impulsive child of Gaul . And we constantly find , in foreign papers , of more or less repute , the most extraordinary and contradictory allegations made against Freemasons . Indeed , to listen to some foolish speakers abroad , and some almost irresponsible writers at home , nearly all

the " evils to which flesh is heir to , " almost all the complications and anomalies of Society , the State , and the World just now , are attributable to those " mysterious and wicked Freemasons . " We speak not here of the normal abuse of the Ultramontane press , to that we are accustomed , and , " like the Eele , " begin rather to like it . Neither do we allude to the abnormal utterances of popes and cardinals , bishops in " partibus " and

bishops not in " partibus , Jesuits , Professors Ulummati " et hoc genus omne , " because , to say the truth , they seem to us all alike " out of court , " by the absurdity of their " premises , " and the fallacy of their " conclusions . " But we rather speak of that sort of general dislike , fad , prejudice , call it what you will , which seems to permeate a large portion , at any rate , of Society and the

world at the very mention of the words " Freemasons or " Freemasonry . One hundred and eighty years and more ago , a Revival took place in London , which certainly has produced most wonderful results . The little seed has developed into a mighty tree of giant growth , under whose umbrageous extent and dominant influences , all over the world to-day we find those who are glad to rest and repose , to claim friendship and acknowledge supremacy .

Since that time , whatever may have been the case in preceding generations or under more mysterious forms , Freemasonry stands before the world in distinctive utterance and oecumenical reality . The ideas it professes and the aims it avows arealike honourable , loyal , philanthropical , and beneficial , and since that time it has not ceased to progress and advance , and to proclaim unceasingly and practice unreservedly those principles and duties ,

which are , without doubt or controversy , for the help and healing of our race , the aid and benefit of humanity , and the general conservation and amelioration of all those forces and all that mechanism , which constitute the safe and controlling motives or hidden springs of Society and the world at large . Loyalty , Charity , Order , Legality , Religion , Toleration , Veneration , Sympathy , Liberty of Conscience , Freedom of Thought , —such are its

watchwords in the strife , and il is under the aigis of these great and endurwg principles , as well as the engaging developement of universal beneficence ° f Charity , that wherever true Freemasonry plants its standard , wherever honest Masonic lodges are set up , their contemporary admirers , neighbours , and even bitter and irreconcible foes witness , and must witness , the happy creation of peaceable and useful centres of light , charity , wisdom , and toleration .

We should have thought " a priori" that the very marked and charitable and utilitarian outcome of Freemasonry in these latter days might have dissipated prejudice and renewed friendliness . VVe no doubt note irom time to time how the world which once ridiculed or persecuted , reemasons , now speaks of English Freemasonry at any rate with

bated breath , " and even a semblance of respect at any rate , of its charitable and utilitarian and beneficent results , which quite overpass j he efforts of all other similar bodies and constitute in themselves a lasting credit on the zeal , the sympathies , and the earnestness of English 'reemasons . But still in various ways and various forms the old heresy survives , the ancient prejudices linger . Let us hope that they will yet

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yield to the soothing influences of tune and common sense , and that the verdict of our contemporaries in respect to Freemasonry may yet be , that to which thoughtful Freemasons havc long since attained , namely , making every allowance for the weakness of earth , and the frailties of mortality , no more

sincerely useful , no more cultivated , no more beneficent organization exists in the world at this hour than that Masonic Craft of ours , which has outlived so many dangers , and weathered so many storms , and gifted with long life , and matured activity and energy , promises still to be of real and living advantage , comfort , and blessing to untold generations of mankind .

* * * THE Little Village is emptying fast , and by thc end of this month all , except those retained by duty , or hindered by " circumstancesover which they have no control , " are leaving for distant scenes , and a long-needed holiday time . The seaside , and Scotland , the Channel Islands , and Normandy , Brittany , Norway , and Ostende , Switzerland , and the German Baths ,

and health resorts are all receiving that heterogeneous crowd , as Lord ROKEBY said of " J and J ENNY BULLS , " with their fads and fancies , with their idiosyncrasies and their complaints . A good old Englishman of another generation used to say that , whenever he met a countryman or countrywoman abroad , he used to go up and shake hands , so isolated he felt there . We fancy such feelings are wearing off , and that the Continent

is becoming as familiar to us as Heme Bay , Margate , or Brighton . loM MOORE once sang of a "fair Blue " whom he should meet drinking tea on the Wall of China . That perhaps is " going a little too far . " Still , our travelled and travelling people are just now everywhere , and we wish them heartily all enjoyment , sound health , and good tempers wherever they

go , wherever they be . And , as many of our worthy Brotherhood are amid that moving , noisy , ubiquitous , gregarious crowd , we desiderate for them equally a very pleasant " outing , " all needful rest and recreation , and trust that they may return to " labour and refreshment " when next their lodge summons specially confronts them , in fullest energy of mind and body , with their smiling faces and their warm hearts .

* # * WE are asked " What is the use of Statistics ? " They are among those things we are told "a fellar can ' t understand . " As the Prince CONSORT said so ably a great deal often depends upon and turns these apparently trivial facts . VVe took up some calculations the other day , and find the following figures , for which we do not vouch , but they will , we think , arrest attention

and command thought . Out of the billion inhabitants of this earth we are told 33 millions die yearly , 90 , 000 per day , 3780 per hour , 60 per minute , and one per second . These 33 million deaths annually are counterbalanced by 41 , 500 , 000 births annually , the excess constituting the annual increase of the universal human race . 8 3 , , 000 marriages take place every year it is averred , or one in 130 ; and a quarter of the children die before their 7 th ,

and one-half before their 17 th year . The average duration of human life is 33 years six months . There are , then a billion of people in the world , as before alleged , speaking 3064 languages , and professing 1100 forms of religion . And though there are many people who , as they say , " never look beyond their nose , " and to whom " a daisy is a daisy and nothing more , " yet such facts and figures as these affect all the teaching of men ,

and the very reality of life , and are the foundation on which are based all the social , psychological and political struggles and theories of our race . It would be most important and valuable , as we have ol ten said , if we could obtain reliable statistics of Universal Freemasonry . The great difficulty is to strike the " even mean " as between the tendency to a " Fraus pia , " and the energy of interested exaggeration . It is the

fashion of our opponents to augment the actual forces and influence of Freemasonry so as to make it a real living danger to persons of the same excited temperament and alarmed " cultus , " and weak , unthinking , and buflleheaded Freemasons to whom you can neither give " brains " nor common sense , think , they increase on their part the prestige of Freemasonry by

adding very largely to its substantial reality and its numerical unit , whereas in truth they do just the contrary . Truth is Truth after all , whether historical or statistical , and though it "lies often at the bottom of a well" as ever , it is , after all , the only one safe gauge of reality , and the only abiding test of accuracy .

* # * WE call attention to a deliverance by Grand Master MURRAY , of the Grand Lodge of Canada , taken from the Montreal Daily News of July gth , by which it would seem that the legal position of the Montreal lodges and of the Grand Lodge of England is openly , if unwillingly , admitted by the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge Lodge of Canada . He , too , like others , bows down to the fiat of the American theory of Grand

Lodge sovereignty , which , as we have for a long time contended , is peculiar to America , and , though it may be workable there , ( it has even there its difficulties ) , has never been recognized in England . We regret to have to add that in our experience , which is now , alas ! of very many years , we have never known a case where so little " strait-running " and so much Masonic Jesuitism have been manifested as in this mournful " Quebec difficulty . "