Funeral Of Bro. Sir T. G. Fermorhesketh.

ther was deeply beloved by his family , tenants , and neighbours , who have suffered an irreparable loss , and his kind and genial feeling towards the craft will never be forgotten . —There was scarcely a dry eye during the delivery of the address .

It is generally understood and desired that Bro . Lord Skelmersdale , P . P . D . G . AL , will succeed the deceased as P . G . M . of AVest Lancashire ; and that Bro . the Hon . F . Stanley , P . P . G . S . W ., will succeed Lord Skelmersdale , as Deputy . These appointments would be certain to prove generally popular in thc- province .

Original Correspondence.

Original Correspondence .

our expectations of a satisfactory answer to the question " Where are the Ten Tribes ? " 1 would not ask for further indulgence were it to add anything of my own , but if I am permitted to give the opinions of three or four writers , in reply to the Professor ' s question , I think your readers will find the matter of some interest , if only as

PROFESSOR RAWLINSON AND THE TEN TRIBES . To the Editor of The Freemason .

Dear Sir and Brother , — I am almost ashamed to ask for any more space , to add to what I have already written on Professor Rawlinson ' s attempt to shew that the Ten Tribes are extinct , after he had raised

pertaining . to * an historical question . But it will show , furthermore , to those who take an interest in the subject on which the Professor writes , that "we ' re naethat fou" as to have taken up an opinion on whicli we can find no one capable of thinking and of investigating , who entertain convictions similar to our own , and able to give reasons for them .

Doctor Abbadie , a well-known writer and antagonist of Bossuel , whose works were published at Amsterdam in 1723 , thus writes : " Lnless the Ten Tribes have ilown into the air , or been plunged to the earth ' s centre , they must be sought in that part of the North which in the time of Constantine teas converted to the Christian laith .

namely , among the Iberians , Armenians , and Scythians , for that was the place of their dispersion , the wilderness where God caused them to dwell in tents , as when thev came out of the hind

of Egypt . Perhaps ( he adds ) were the subject carefull y examined , it would be found that the nations who , in the fifth age , made irruption into the Roman [ empire , and whom Procopius reduces to ten in number ( he wrote " De Hello

Gothico , and died about V . D . ~ fio ) , were 111 fact the Ten Tribes , who , kept in a state of separation up to that time , then quitted the Euxine anil Caspian , tin * p lace of their exile , because the cotintry could no longer contain them . Everything fortifies this conjecture , as the extraordinary

multiplication ol this people , marked so precisely by the prophets , the number of the tribes , tlie custom of those nations to dwell in tents , according to the oracle ( see Pocock : 1 [ osea xii . 9 ) , and many other usages of the Scythians , similar to those of the Children of Israel . " I le

concludes that the Ten Tribes , separated or not from other peoples , could not fail , in their circumstances , to multiply exceedingly , and that they found God again in their disper .-ion . The famous antiquarian . Speed , who wrote towards ihe close ofthe sixteenth century ,

elaborately discusses the origin of the mime Saxon , and examines several of the theories thai have been advanced tis to the country from which they originall y came . He refers , among other authors , to Albinus , the friend of Bede , who lived in the eighth century . Albinus , he says , believes the

Saxons to have been descended from the Saw , a people in Asia , and that afterwards , in process of time , they came to be called Saxons , as if it were written Sax-sones , i . e . the sons of the Sacuc To this opinion , " says Speed , "Master Henry Ferrers ,

a gentleman of ancient descent , great reading , and a judicious antiquary , agrccth , whose judgment for any particular , J have always honoured , and from his ' Progenv of the English Monarehs ' J have taken my principal proceedings in these Saxon successors . "

Original Correspondence.

The old English chronicler proceeds , — " As touching the ancient place of their abode , Ptolemy , thc Alexandrian , placeth the people , Sasones , in the inner Scythia , betwixt the mountains Alani and Tapnri ; and Amianus Aiarcellinus citeth thc Sacae ( no doubt the very

same ) a fierce and savage nation , who inhabited overgrown places , commodious only for cattle , at the foot of the mountains Ascanimia and and Comedus , near unto which the city Alexandra , Tribatra , and Drepsa were adjoining , and are so set by Ptolmey . Neither is it less

probable that our Saxons descended from the Sacre , in Asia , than the Germans from those Germans in Persia , of whom Herodotus writeth . . . . Of the Sacre , Strabo writeth , flthat they made invasions into countries afar oil " , as namely , Armenia , where they left the memory of their

success in a part of that country by calling it Sacacena , after their own name . From these parts of Asia , as Scythia and the rest , one band of them , consisting chiefly of their youth , proceeded by degreess into Europe , and passed the Ness or Foreland , whicli the Romans called

Cimbnca Chersonesus , being at tins day the continent part of the kingdom of Denmark , in which place they were first known by the name of Saxons , and here , also , they , among themselves , began lirst to be distinguished into other tribes , but , more pioperly , we may say into

Saxons , Angles , and J utes . From hence , afterwards , thev departed , and passing over the river Elbe , divided themselves into two companies , whereof the one taking into the upper parts of Germany , by little and little obtruded themselves into the ancient seat of the Suevians

which now of them is called Westphalia , and Saxony ; and the otherencroached upon Friesland and . Holland ( then called Jiatavia ) , with the rest of those countries that lie along the German seas . . Most certain it is , by Eutropius and Bede , that before the year 300 , when

Diocletian swayed the Roman sceptre , the Saxons out of Cimbrica Chersonesus sore offended the coasts of Britain and France with their many piracies , and were fearful even to the Romans themselves . These multiplied in number ami strength , seated in the maritime

tract of Jutland , Sleswick , Alsatia , Ditmarse , Bretne , ( Mdenburgh , till Friesland , and Holland : and indeed , according to the testimony of Fabius Qutestor , ' wholly all the seacoasls , from the river Rhine unto the city Donia , which now is commonly called the Dennitirc . " And whither

Henry of Erfurd allirineth Saxon-land to stretch from the river Albis unto the Rhine : ' the bounds of no one people of till the Germans extending any way so far , ' saith he . " He adds , '' These Gette ( no doubt the Jute ) Ptolmey likewise placeth in the Island Scandia , lying very near the

coasts ol Germany , upon whose uttermost promontory—as said an ancient A 1 S . —the J utes did for certain inhabit , which unto this day of the Danes , is called J uteland . 'These Jutes , Gules , Getes , Goths , or , as Bede calls them \ ites , gave names to those parts of Britain which they

inhabited This may suffice for the ori ginals of these three people ; who , as Cisner allirineth , retained still the same manners alter they were settled in Europe , as they had formerly done in Asia . ( Speed ' s Chronicles , 1660 ) . '

Air . Wilson , who speaks of Speed as " one ol the most learned , earnest , honest , and successful oi our English antiquaries , and epiotes the preceding exercitations , with some others , from him , observes thereupon , that it is curious , Speetl , amidst till his gropings , should have entirely

overlooked the real tint ! very simple origin of the name " Saxon , " upon which origin of the name he thus writes . " There was a name which it might be expected they ( Israel ) would retain , lor b y it the promised seed of Abraham were to be called ; and that is the name of his son Isaac .

By this name the house of Israel was being called a litlle time before their captivity : " Now therefore hear thou the word of the Lord ; thou sayest , Prophesy not against Israel , and drop not thy word against the house of Isaac . " ( Amos .

vn . 16 . ) J he name ol Isaac means 'he shall laugh . ' Sarah said at his birth , the Lord hath , made me lo laugh , so that all people shall laugh with me . But the name may also be taken in an evil sense -, and in this it seems to

Original Correspondence.

have been deserved by the Ephraimites , when bitter weeping was about to be their portion . They laughed to scorn , and mocked the messengers which King Hezekiah sent to call them to repentance . Of two kinds of laughter the Jewish remnant were warned to beware : ' Now , therefore ,

be ye not mockers' ( Isa . xxvii . 22 . ) It is as rejoicing in God ' s salvation , and as makingknown that joy to others , that we were to bear the name of Isaac The first syllable of that name ; it may- be noticed , is no original part of

the Hebrew word ' to laugh , ' and would naturall y be dropped , when compounded with the word ' son , ' or ' sen , ' meaning a repetition or copy of his father . ' Isaac ' s son , " naturally becomes Isaac-son or Saxon . " ( Watchmen of Ephraim , vol . ii . j ) . 121 . )

Professor Piazzi Smyth , the Astronomer Royal for Scotland , whose works , " Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramidt" ( 1864 ) , an ( l "Life and work at the Great Pyramid in 1865 " ( 1867 ) , are spoken as monument of patient research ; and are referred to as of scientific authority , thus writes in the third volume ofthe last named work .

— " At present we all appreciate the name , Saxons , as applying to a majority of the inhabiants of Great Britain and the United States , with their roots amon g the Scandinavian , German , and Gothic populations of the Continent ; but the Anglo-Saxons arc no more the aborigines of

these European than of the American countries , where they are now found . They came , indeed , confessedly , according to all history , to these regions from the eastward , within the last eighteen hundred years ; and if we enquire of the ethnologist what all the Anglo-Saxon , Scandinavian ,

German , and Gothic nations are called in their science , we are told , ' Indo-Germanic ; or that they all had an eastern and southern origin . This subject litis been been followed up more particularly by Air . John Wilson , of Brighton , for the English-speaking races ofthe Anglo-Saxon , with

some remarkable results , one of the first being , that , though in the dark ages , constituting a part of the Gothic immigrating hosts , and in so far Goths , ( with whom we are accustomed to connect everything barbarous and savage ) they , the Anglo-Saxon portion , and some others , too , of the

Goths , were not savages , but had , on the contrary , the physiological testimony , in large , well-formed brains and line hair , of a race long nurtured in superior intellectual and social culture ; besides political proofs of the same , in the possession of very complete and wisely-devised systems of

laws , with orderly manners and customs . That all Goths were necessarily barba . ians , is an idea that has grown up from our lirst descriptions ol them having been unfortunately written chiefly by their enemies , whom they were conquering , viz ., the pampered and enervated sons of Rome

in her decline and decrepitude . To such luxurious debauchees , the simple and regularly-living ( ioths were , of course , mere so-called . savages , and yet might be more hi ghly appreciative of moral virtue . While , as for artistic feeling , and in architecture , where the Romans did little else

than servilely follow the Greeks , the Gothic peoples produced an entirely new variety ofthe art , and so exceedingly exquisite , as to oblige all the present world to use the name of Gothic in connection with the beautiful , just as systematicall y and frequently as erroneous literary , and

Romanderived prejudices had hitherto made us inclined to appropriate it also to everything the very opposite of beautiful . What was the country , then , whence the Anglo-Saxons started on that occasion r 'This is the second point on which Air . Wilson has reached some most noteworthy

results , and by the method of language , applied in . a very safe and thoroughly inductive manner ; for he distinguishes the traces of the original foundation of a language , from the often very numerous facts , and sometimes preponderating mass of substance , introduced into it at

subsequent times . The chief importation of this nature which Air . Wilson finds in the Anglo-Saxon , is from the Persian or Median . In this conclusion he yvas , indeed , preceded , as he acknowledges , by Sharon Turner , and many other

writers on the Germanic and Scandinavian languages and peoples . In so far , indeed , there is nothing contradictory , either to ancient tradition or modern science , in deriving the Anglo-Saxons , with some portion of Sclavonians , Scandinavians .,