Freemasonry : Its Origin, Its History, And Its Design.

and power are at the time suspended , and Masons meet together on the great level of equality . The prince and the peasant , the bishop and the layman , sit together , and join hand in hand in the same symbolic labour . It is but the other day that the

heir apparent of the British Crown was seen kneeling at the feet of one of his subjects and giving to him his oath of Blasonic allegiance and fealty . So , too , it is eminently a benevolent institution . There is no other institution

that has built and endowed more asylums for the aged and decayed , or hospitals for the sick , or houses for orphans , or done more to clothe the naked , to feed the hungry or relieve the poor , and in granting eleemosynary aid to the distressed brother

or his destitute widow . It hallows and sanctifies the gift by the silence and secresy with which it is bestowed . Such is Freemasonry—venerable in its age and beneficent in its design . New York Herald .

Assyrian History.

ASSYRIAN HISTORY .

BIR . GEORGE SMITH , the learned Assyriologist , has delivered a course of three exceedingly interesting and valuable lectures on " Assyrian History , " at the Royal Institution , Albemarle-street , which have been listened to with marked attention and intelligent appreciation by large

and cultivated audiences of members and visitors . BIr . Smith introduced his subject by a reference to Assyria ' s striking adaptation by nature to be the seat of a great empire , and drew a parallel between its advantages and those of Egypt in this respect . He next alluded to the complete

contradiction given by the cuneiform inscriptions to the traditions handed down by Ktesias and other Greek writers respecting Ninus , the alleged founder of the Assyrian monarch y aud of its capital Nineveh , and of his warlike Queen Semiramis , the pretended founder of Bab ylon .

Of this Royal pair the engraved clay tablets and cylinders knew no more than they did of the world-wide realm they are said to have carved out for themselves with their swords . The cuneiform records equally ignored the long line of faineant kings , unbroken by the appearance of a single

hero , whom classical authority makes out to have been the successors of this redoubtable couple . According to the epigraphic sources , which , although fragmentary , are pretty copious , the earliest known settlers of Assyria must have been a race speaking the Turanian tongueakin to the Tartar

, aud Finnish , and variously known as Akkadians or Proto-Chaldeans . At a very remote but asyetunascertainable date they and their civilisation , which was a of high type , were submerged by hordes of conquering Semites , speaking languages allied to

the Hebrew , Syriac and Arabic . Arabia is plausibly thought to have been the hive whence these barbarian con a uerors swarmed . In time these Semite Assyrians learned to write , borrowing for this purpose the arrowheadedscript of their Turanian predecessors ,

along with the other arts and sciences , and even the religion and mythology of that subjugated people . The age of no Assyrian monument is known to reach higher than B . C . 2300 . But the advanced state of the arts of engraving and architecture , and the high development of the mythology which are found , even at this early period , necessarily presuppose a long

antecedent stage of infancy and many ages of gradual growth . Just as the naturalist , looking at some newly-found but highlydeveloped animal or vegetable form , can confidently assert the existence of earlier transitional types , so we , looking at the evidence of culture in Bablonia 4000

y years ago , can feel sure that this state of civilisation was only reached after many centuries of progress . The learned lecturer then sketched briefly the most ancient geography and mythology of Western Asia ,, and next , amidst the breathless silence of

his deeply interested audience , began to speak of a new document on which lie had lately lighted in the British Museum , giving accounts of the Creation , the Fall , and the building of the . Tower of Babel . The Babylonians and

Assyrians in pre-historic times , he said , appear to have distinguished four eras . These were the epoch of the Creation , of the Flood , of the Tower of Babel , and lastly of Izdubar or Nimrod . There was a very general and earl tradition in the

y Euphrates Valley as to the Creation , one version of which is known to us from the fragments of Berosus . Mr . Smith had recently found an Assyrian copy of another