Rosengarten's Architectural Styles.*

ROSENGARTEN'S ARCHITECTURAL STYLES . *

THIS is a work published in 1878 , and though it has only lately and accidentally come before us , it seems to us to deserve notice and commendation in the pages of our magazine . It is very handily and happily got up , illustrated by 639 illustrations , admirably printed , and most pleasant reading . It is interesting to us specially as Freemasons , in that it seems to accept as a fact the existence and movements of the Masonic Guilds , and to hail them as the precursors of our speculative Masonic system . Curiously enough , the

writer thinks he sees in them a sort of protest against over-weening medicnval ultramontane influences , but we confess we doubt very much both the reality of his theory and the soundness of his conclusions . In that doubtless spurious MS . which ] 5 rofesses to represent the secret teaching of the Templars , and which clearly does not exist in the Vatican library , and which was a posthumous publication of the w ell known MerzdorffHunteror whoever was

, , the fabricator , surrounds the templarism of the thirteenth century with the controversies of the Reformation period . But it is not impossible that that spirit of resistance to and dislike of medhoval Romanism which led to the teaching of Wioklift ' e and the culminating efforts of Luther and the English Reformation , may have begun to work secretly in the thirteenth cpntnry . So far in England we have no evidence of any such feeling at work .. The

known Guild Constitutions are all uniform in their loyal adhesion to the " Church " of the period , and it is that peculiar characteristic of the Hasonic Guilds which has been invoked by some as an objection to the connecting and consecutive history of an operative and speculative brotherhood . Admiring and appreciating as we do Mr . Sandars' translation of Rosengarten ' s valuable and interestin g " handbook" we think thaton the wdiole

, , , we prefer to leave out this special question of intellectual revolt and sectional controvers 3 . The history of the Masonic Guilds has yet to be written and brought out clearly before us , and that most important chapter in the long annals of our social , domestic , and national life has yet to be fully developed and rightly valued on its effect on the manners , and buildings , and traditions of several centuries . Toulmin Smith gives us but a very little portion of the

Guild returns which he saw , and which still exist , mouldering in silence and dust . Wh y should not Bro . Gould , for instance , devote himself to a selection of operative Mason Guild regulations ? He would confer another favour on Masonic students .

The Timely Warning.*

THE TIMELY WARNING . *

BY BRO . ROB . MORRIS . TT is now several years since I was travelling on a stern-ivheeler from Cairo J- to Memphis , and a slow and painful conveyance it proved to me . The bill of fare was fri ghtfully scanty , the bedding bug-haunted , the company profligate . Gambling was going on from sunrise to midni ght , and every houror Wo a fight settled the gameafter which a new " deck of keerds" as the

, , gamblers unconthly styled them , was "fetched on , " and another round began , to terminate as before . Among the passengers I had observed a young man of that gentle , amiable cast of countenance which young men even at this day sometimes wear who have been raised in pious families , under the hands of loving mothers and