The Majesty Of Architecture.

of the imagination calling to be expressed in material forms ; and the vast lengths of colourless flannel , of continuous labour handed down from generation to generation in a certain groove , unassorted by temptation to riot or revel in the gorgeousness of colour . Contrast this with the

tendencies of the Oriental mind , every phase of which , in its exhibition of colour , is as a plane upon a crystal prism , and which , in like manner , exhibits the same tastes as ancient buildhip's

indicate that the remotest occupiers of all the soil possessed . Exhumed specimens of Assyrian architecture , with their brilliant blue and red , deep yellow , and black and white decorations , assure us that under the glaring sun of the desert the earliest races rejoiced in colour as their modern

representatives do to this day . They display , too , further characteristics of their builders which are also present in the people now occupying their neighbourhood . We have , in the multiplicity of figures and incidents , depicted in their bassorelievos traces of the root of the restless , passionate ,

impressionable temperaments that now inhabit the desert . The eye-hunger for colour of the ancient Assyrian could not have been more insatiate than that which induces the owners of the white asses of the Bagdad to dye them with kenna and dip their tails and ears bright red , or dictates the use of variegated turbans and striped abas to the

Bedouins , or of robes of the scarlet silk of Damascus , or of scarlet and white fretted with threads of gold worn by the ladies of Bagdad . Philological archa 3 ology affords us many clues which , if we follow , will lead us back across Europe and through faint-tinted and faint-outlined

centuries into our old Asiatic home . Professor Simpson notes that the vast populations springing from the Aryan stock " all use words , which , though phonetically changed , are radically identical for many matters , as the nearest relationships of family life , for the naming of domestic animals

and other common objects . Some of these archaic words indicate by their hoaiy antiquity the original pastoral employment and character of those that formed the parental stock in our old original Asiatic home : the special term , for example ( the f pasu' of the old Sanskrit ) , which signified ' private' property among the Aryans , and which we now use under the English modifications

peculiar •and ' pecuniary , ' primarily meaning c flocks , ' or possession of flocks ; the Sanskrit word for protector , and ultimately for the king himself , c gopn , ' being the old word for cowherd , and consecutively for chief herdsman ; while the endearing name of daughter ( the ' duhitar' of the Sanskrit )

as applied in tlie leading Indo-European languages to the female children of our households , is derived from a . verb which shows the original signification of the appellation to have been the milker of cows . " But architecture , in its calm enduring majesty , does still more than this . The sculptured decorations of the ruined palaces and temples on the

The Majesty Of Architecture.

banks of the Tigris and Euphrates show us that their builders were acquainted with most of the arts now , and in Mediawal times , common to Europe . The various contrivances used in the Middles Ages in warfare were all known to the people who reared and subsequently abandoned

these piles . The movable tower running on wheels , the battering-rams , the catapult , scalingladders , huge shields capable of covering several men at work at the various processes of' mining and picking a breach , were depicted by the Assyrians and Egyptians thousands of years ago .

The prophet Ezekiel , announcing the approaching destruction of Tyre , says of Nebuchadnezzar , "He shall slay with the sword thy daughters in the field : and he shall make a fort against thee and lift up the buckler against thee . And he shall set engines of war against thy walls , and with his axes

he shall break down thy towers . And the storied sculptures and bricks of the overthrown structures of Nebuchadnezzar—mere disregarded mounds in the desert for centuries—when examined " in a fortunate month and upon an auspicious day , " confirm the fulfilment of the prophecy . In a word ,

Assyrian architecture tells us the language , the arts , and the materials at command of the nation in the days of its magnificence . Egyptian architecture , after centuries of reticence , yields similar information to modern explorers . We are still more familiar with the fidelity with which Roman

buildings reflect the successive acquisitions of the mistress of the world . Seeing , then , that architecture thus tells the history of peoples , and thus teaches the measure of man's learning in so many of the arts and sciences , is it not meet that we should approach its practice with due reverence and understanding ?—Builder .

Masonic Notes And Queries.

MASONIC NOTES AND QUERIES .

FKEmrASOXEV AXP ODB - FELLOWS . In the American Freemason some five or six years back I met with a letter complaining that the Oddfellows there burlesqued the forms and ceremonies of Freemasons . The letter is so interesting that I send it entire but what I would ask is , —Do the

Oddfellows in England act in like manner?—Ex . Ex . It is as painful to me as it can be to you , to say a word against a society that numbers so many of the best men of the nation ; of the members of the Masonic fraternity aud of my personal friends in its ranks . Nor would I , were the rulers of that Society

to let Masomy alone . Surely it is not too much to ask that the G-. L . of Odd Fellows should cease to appropriate the Masonic features—features that have distinguished the Royal Art for three thousand years , have made it an universal association , and given it all the di weihtand usefulness it ! yet that

gnity , g , possesses is " all 1 have ' ever asked of Odd Fellowship , and for that asking I have-been by some ( not by you ) deemed an enemy by that society . As this is the first opportunity I have had in my present volume to discuss