The Past.

For all is dead and buried , We loug'd so much to save , Aud friends and forms so serried Have inarched unto the grave ? 0 past ! what darkling message

Hast thou in store for man ? 0 past I what gloomy jiresage , Amid this fleeting span , Thou givest ever to our race ,

As hours and hours flit on , As vanish'd every gift and grace , The world caii smile upon ? Hopeless in thy mystery , Like Isis iu her shroud ; Mournful in thy history ,

What solemn fancies crowd , Around thy wither'd posies , Around thy alter'd mien , Around thy scatter'd roses , Around thy faded sheen .

0 past ! hast thou no voice ? Hast thou no tale to tell , Which , bidding us rejoice , With those we love full well , Can drown the din of care , Can still the hearts opprest , In hopes all fond and fair

Of harbourage and rest ? Hast thou no voice of blessing ? No whisperings of love ? No songs or words caressing , Which lift us all above These fleeting hours and pleasures ,

Each vanishing delight , These disappointing treasures , These sights of wrong and right ? Hast thou no other being , To tell of far away ? Beyond the doing and the seeing ,

Of our poor little day 1 Is there no glad to-morrow , To dawn upon the scene , No end of care and sorrow , Oblivion of what has been ?

0 past ! I think I hear , From out th } ' buried years , Amid each doubt and fear , Amid the wistful tears , A voice all gently telling , In accents full of bliss ,

Of an eternal dwelling , Of a better home than this . A . F . A . W .

What Freemasonry Has Done.

WHAT FREEMASONRY HAS DONE .

AN honest enquirer has asked us , " "What has Freemasonry done to establish its claim to the distinguished honour and position which Masons assign to it in the world ? " We answer , it has , to a veiy creditable extent , promoted the work of civilization . The pages of history supply

but scanty records of its usefulness . What Freemasonry has done , in this direction , has not been proclaimed to the world . She works not as an organized body , displaying its machinery to the world ; . but works through its members themselves and

through their means . But this is more or less withdrawn from the gaze of the enquirer , as also from the world in general ; for " the actual deeds of a Freemason are his secrets . " Freemasomy has been the conservator

of pure and sound religious morals in times of almost universal degeneracy . We do not claim too much for it when we say that , in the Fourteenth Century , more especially in Germany , and in Northern Europe generally , when corruption and licentiousness had invaded the Church of

God ; when vice in its grossest form , and immorality in its most revolting aspects , were sanctioned by those who ministered at its sacred altars of religious worship , Freemasonry entered its solemn and oftrepeated protests against the corruptions and profligacy of the times . The sturdy

operative Blasons , moved by these strong and vigorous words , engraved with their own honest hands upon the solid rock which they wrought for building purposes , figures , words , and sentences , that stood out in mute rebuke of the unbridled

licentiousness of the very priests themselves , who were the moral and reli gious instructors of the people ! And many of those silent but stern rebukes remain till the present time , in attestation of the hi gh and healthful tone maintained by the

Craft in mediaeval times . In the meantime , the lives and examples of the fraternity were in exemplification of a higher and purer morality than was found , at the time referred to in the Church itself . How far the sterner and more elevated morals of the association of Operative Blasons , in these days , went to countervail