Contents.

CONTENTS .

L EADERS— PAOE . A Critic on thc Bounce 583 The Old Charges of British Freemasons 5 S 4 Mark Patent and Kndorsemcnts—1858—i $ 9 * 5 ^ 5 Consecration of lhc Karl of Lathom Lodge , No . 25 G 0 , at Bury ... ... 586 provincial Grand . Mark Lodgeof Lancashire 586 Provincial Grand Lodge of South Wales { Western Division ) 58 ? Installation of ihe District Grand Master of Natal 587 REII CROSSDivisional Grand Conclave of Kent 5 S 7

OHJTUARY— PAGH . Bros . Thos , Rix and I ) . Kdwards ... ? SS Reviews 58 S Mark Masonry 58 9 OUR PORTRAIT CAI . U . RYliros . Sir Joseph Dimsdale , Will K . Chapman , and K . Crosoer ... 5 S 9 Roard of Benevolence 5 S 9 Masonic Notes 591 CORRESPONDENCEA ( Jrand Lodge for South Africa ... 592 Craft Masonry 592 Royal . Arch Masonry 596 Masonic and General Tidings 59 S Lodge Meetings for Next Week iii .

A Critic On The Bounce.

A CRITIC ON THE BOUNCE .

It is hardly necessary we should go back to the days of ancient fable in order to demonstrate the impossibility of pleasing everybody . It is within the daily experience of nearly every one that , no matter how excellent a thing may bc said or

done by some person , or body of persons , there is always at hand the carping critic to prove that it might , could , would , or should have been something different . We have recently had a conspicuous or , more properly speaking , deplorable instance

of this . Some few weeks since a worthy correspondent of ours sent us a paragraph to thc effect that thc Lodge of Friendship , Xo . 44 , Manchester , " commenced the 141 st year of its existence on thc 18 th June last , " and had elected a certain brother to

he its W . M . during thc ensuing 12 months . A fortnight later we published a letter from Bro . JOHN CHADWICK , who is a P . M . of Xo . 44 , and Provincial Grand Secretary of East Lancashirewhich might certainly have been couched in gentler

languageto the effect that" the authenticity of our correspondent ' s statement , whicli displayed such ignorance , " might have been ascertained by reference to Bro . JOHN LANE ' S valuable ' Masonic Records . ' " At thc same time , and in the belief that the tone of

Bro . ClIADWICK's letter was not altogether to our informant ' s taste , we penned a " Note , " in which we pointed out that the latter had certainly just this amount of justification for his statement , namely , that Grand Lodge Calendar gave 1755 as the "date

of origin" of the said lodge , and suggesting that as he might not be in the habit of carrying * Bro . LANE ' S " Records " about with him , or had it not at hand when writing , he had taken the ( Jrand Lodge statement as sufficient . The following week Bro .

X . HEYWOOD rejoined , however , that the warrant of confirmation which hangs in the . lodge room , and is signed by the Duke of ¦ SUSSEX and the Earl of DURHAM , recited that " the lodge was warranted on thc 18 th day of June , 1755 , " and remarked that

Bro . ClIADWICK ' s objection came " too late in thc day to carry much weig ht in face of such documentary evidence . " On the top of this comes Bro . LANE , who has made this branch of Masonic History his special study , and who informs Bro . HEYWOOD , with

all due courtesy , but with a sledge-hammer-like accuracy , which brooks no trifling , that No . 44 is descended from thc Athol No . 39 . of 1803 , that it was not in any way connected with the Athol , ^ ° ' 39 ) which was revived in 1795 , and had still less to do with thc

0 r iginal No . 39 , for which the Ancient Grand Lodge granted its Warrant on the iSth June , 1755 . All this might have been learned from his "Masonic Records" had they been at hand for Bro . HEYWOOD to refer to . Still , nothing of moment would

have resulted from the pa . s _ . age of arms between these ^' orth y brethren ; nothing , at all events , of such importance that l ( - '" light not have been set right by a reference to LANE ' " Records , " as it has , indeed , been set right by that brother himself .

A Critic On The Bounce.

Unfortunately , one of those people we have already referred to as "carping critics " has intervened , for reasons best known to himself , but whicli we do not pvoU ^ s to understand , and , after lashing out savagely at everybody within reach , invites us to

believe that this important work , of which tlie Grand Secretary of England has spoken in terms of the highest encomium , which every member of the Grand Secretary ' s staff has found invaluable as an aid in the discharge of his duties , which every brother

who has ever had occasion to di p into our archives for the purpose of tracing the continuity of any lodge , has found similarly invaluable ; of which Grand Lodge thankfully and gracefully accepted

the copyright last year , and has since published a second edition at its own cost—we say this " carping critic " comes forward and invites us to believe that these " Masonic

Records , " in the very teeth of the overwhelming commendation they have received from all these authorities , are of little or no value for thc purpose for which they were compiled and have been published . But in our righteous indignation at this

unwarranted aspersion upon a work which has won for its author a praise which is almost universal , we must not allow ourselves to be hurried into anything like mistatement of fact . The critic does not go so far as to assert directly that the book is worthless

for its purpose . He gives Bro . LANE ' reason for preparing a second edition of his work—that he might have ; an opportunity of making " many hundreds of important corrections" in the Iirstand then propounds an extraordinary question in the following

form . " Having admitted that the first edition needed many hundreds of important corrections , what guarantee have we that the second is any better ? " Thus contemptuously does this critic who , in everything that he has written , betrays his absolute

ignorance of the subject he has taken upon himself to write about , dispose of a work which has taken Bro . LAM-: whole years of the most laborious work to compile , which all who know anything

of thc difficulties entailed in preparing such a compilation have praised unstintedly , and which the officials of Grand Lodge , who have principally benefited by its publication , have again and again declared to be invaluable . But let us for one moment

dismiss this contemptuous statement of this ignorant critic from our minds and turn to what was said by Bro . THOMAS FENN , President of the Board of General Purposes , from his place in Grand Lodge at the Quarterly Communication on the Cth June ,

1894 . Bro . FENN , in officially announcing that Bro . LANE had presented Grand Lodge with the copyright of his work , gave in full the terms of the recommendation of the Board he presided over that Grand Lodge should accept the proffered

book , and in that recommendation will be found the following ; " Many years of patient labour and careful research were spent by the compiler in its preparation , and it is , perhaps , thc most useful Masonic work ever published . To the Secretarial

Department of the Grand Lodge it is simply invaluable , giving , as it does , information at a glance which otherwise could only be obtained , if at all , at the cost of much time and research . The book has been out of print some years , and ever since its issue

Bro . LANE has been collecting materials for a new ar . d revised edition which will contain many hundreds of important corrections , and will also include all lodges warranted down to the present time . " This is what the Board of General Purposes

said in its recommendation fo ( Jrand Lodge to accept the book . What Bro . FENN himself said when proposing the adoption ofthe recommendation was as follows : "He had no doubt the book was well known to thc brethren . The Grand Secretary could