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V H AMHC ILLUSTRATED .

Some Illustrious Freemasons.

Some Illustrious Freemasons .

I is a well worn adage that a man is known by the company he keeps . Judged by this standard , Freemasons have probably less reason to be ashamed of themselves than any other section of the community . Not that we suggest for a moment that every member of the

Order is a credit to himself , a testimonial to the Order to which he belongs and an ornament of the community in general . Far from it . But we can claim two things in this connection . First of all no purely social body exacts so many safeguards and guarantees from those who

seek to become members of it . That there are those who survive the ordeal , and then do us little credit , is deeply to be regretted ; but the Apostolic College even was not free from taint . The other consideration is that when once a brother has begun a downward course , he quite naturally foregoes his active connection with us . There is nothing in

our ritual nor our lectures that can appeal to such an one—in fact , lodge meetings become irksome , and even if he keep his name on the lodge books , his visits become infrequent and soon cease altogether . Some such consideration as this is at the bottom of the oft repeated injunction to young

Masons , to be diligent in attendance . Continual contact with earnest and well-meaning men is bound to exert a steadying influence . And he is further steadied by the inheritance of tradition into which he has stepped . Perhaps the lodge has traditions . Certainly the

Craft has , and very noble ones . And it has more than tradition . It has its roll call of the illustrious dead , and St . Paul tells us of a glorious cloud of witnesses whose presence and whose sympathy ought to be a spur and incentive to noble action .

We do not of course allude to the fables current among those brethren of vivid imagination , who from the time of Dr . Anderson downwards have invested the Craft with an antiquity coasval with the Fiat Lux . These brethren will talk of the disasters that resulted from the unauthorized

intrusion of a cowan into the Eden Lodge , No . i , and Dr . Anderson gravely tells us that the only three Grand Officers saved at the time of the flood , were the three sons of Noah . All this we may dismiss with a smile , feeling that we have quite as much in the way of antiquity as is good for any one , when we have accepted K . S ., H . A ., and H . K . T .

We want to get on to practical ground , however . In gathering a list of the names of those whom we are proud to think have been brothers in our . Order , and have taken the same obligations as ourselves , and worked the same ceremonies , we are compelled to restrain ourselves from going back further than the last three centuries , if we want

to deal in facts only . It has been the fashion among Masonic archaeologists , to regard the dabbling in the occult sciences which distinguished the learned men of some six hundred years ago , as being in some way connected with the Craft as it might then have been . Possibly so . And therefore

the names of Albertus Magnus , Paracelsus , Raymond Lully , Roger Bacon , Hermes Trismegistus , Cornelius Agrippa , and even Dr . Faustus , find places in Masonic literature . With more show of reason such men as Euclid , Pythagoras , Thales , and Archimedes have been preserved , not only in

Masonic antiquarian literature but in our lectures , and even in our jewels ; and , it may be added , in our lodge nomenclature . But even with such respectable names as these , we are still in the regions of romance . But the succession is worthily kept up in the regions of fact . There has been George Washington , initiated in 1752

, in the town of Fredericksburg , and nominated for Grand Master of Virginia in 1777 . The New World has also given to Freemasonry , Benjamin Franklin , Worshipful Master of a lodge in Philadelphia in 1734 , and afterwards described , though on perhaps insufficient grounds , as Grand Master of

the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania . Another distinguished son of America was " Stonewall " Jackson , initiated in 1805 , in the Cumberland Lodge , No . 8 , at Nashville . In 18 33 he was Grand Master , at the end of his tenure of office as President .

Coming nearer home , the illustrious Duke of Wellington , and his great rival , Napoleon , arrest our attention . The latter conquered Freemasonry as he was accustomed to conquer other things . The Duke was initiated in No . 494 , in December , 1790 , but truth compels us to state that he did not take a very active interest in the Order , having other

things to occupy his attention . Yet who shall say that he was not as true a Mason as was ever initiated . Some further particulars of his career are to be found in the Masonic Magazine for January , 1875 . Other warriors on our roll are Lord Nelson , Sir R . Abercrombie , Sir John Moore , Sir J . C . Napier ,

Earl rf Moira , and Gustavus Adolphus , and in our OWJI day , Lords Roberts , VVolseley , and Kitchener . Among great physicians we have Jenner , the discoverer of inocculation , Arbuthnot , B . W . Richardson , Simpson , the discoverer of chloroform , Mungo Park , Lavater and Guillotin . Among musicians , the names of Haydn and Mozart are pre-eminent ,