The Knights Templars.

a fresh crime , for which he suffered capital punishment . Squin de Flexian , spurned from society , hanged himself on a tree . " History attests , " says Eaynouard , " that all those who were leaders in the persecution of the Templars came to a

miserable and untimely death . Philip ' s closing days were embittered by misfortune ; his clergy and his nobles leagued together to resist his exactions * the wives of his three sons were accused of adultery , and two of them publicly convicted of the

crime . The misfortunes of Edward the Second of England , his horrible end in Berkeley Castle , are too well known to be further alluded to . " The

ends of De Nogaret and De Marigny , also tell of a retributive justice . The confinement of Louis XVL with his family , and the miserable end of the Dauphin , in the dungeons of the Temple , Paris , during the French Eevolution , are

suggestive . It might almost be said that the Divine vengeance , after slumbering for nearly five hundred years , had burst out afresh , and in the very maneion where by an act of unparalled atrocity , the Grand Master and leaders of the Templars had

been seized , the French monarchy expired . To the student of curious historical coincidences , the ends of the three great Military Orders will not be uninteresting . The Teutonic Knights , a German Order , became extinct in Germany ; the

Templars , originally composed of Frenchmen , expired in France ; while the hospitallers of St . John , of Italian origin , now lead a languishing existence in Borne . It is curious that they all returned to their native countries to die .

"Upon the whole question , there can exist but one opinion regarding the Order of the Temple * that while innocent of every crime brought against it , it was hunted to the death on account of its wealth and growing power .

Ears Of Wheat Feom A Cornucopia.

EARS OF WHEAT FEOM A CORNUCOPIA .

By Bro . D . MUEEAY LYON , A . M ., Masonic University of Kentuclmj , U . S . ; Hon . Corresponding Member of the Union of German Freemasons , and of the Rosicrucian Society of England ; one of the Grand Stewards in the Grand Lodge of Scotland ; P . G . S . W . of Ayrshire ; author of the "History of Mother Kilwinning , " Sfc .

( Continued from page 465 ) . INELIGIBILITY OE BASTARDS AS FREEMASONS . A writer in one of our contemporaries , in his anxiety to uphold the purity of lodge membership speaks authoritatively on what he alleges to be the

practice obtaining among Scotch lodges in their relation to men who have had the misfortune to be born out of wedlock . " It has ( he says ) been an indisputable rule , and constantly acted upon in lodges of Britain in older times , that no bastard

could be received as a Freemason . . . . Iu Scotland this ancient landmark and law has been maintained with almost no exception ; and 'it is not long since , in a lodge holding a hi gh position in the Craft , two men were positively rejected on no

other ground than that they could not show the legitimacy of their birth . " No Scotch Masonic statute known to us bears out the statement here made as to the " ineligibility of bastards as Freemasons . " The oldest Scotch Masonic statutes extant are those of the Ayr Squaremen Incorporation , dated 1556 . The

next in point of antiquity are the Ordinances of William Schaw , Master of Work to James VI ., dated 1598-99 . Neither in these documents , nor in the records of the Lodge of Edinburgh ( Mary ' s Chapel ) , No . 1 , dating from 1598 , or of Mother

Kilwinning , dating from 1642 , is there to be found any law preventing the admission of bastards . The oldest of the documents quoted enacts that " gif the prentes be ane friemanis sone he sal ! pay ehtres fyve schillingis , and gif he be not ane

friemanis sone he sail pay ten schillingis . " " A similar privilege was enjoyed by the "lawful sons " of freemen in ancient Lodges of Kilwinning and Edinburgh ; but it was onl y in this respect that an apprentice Masons the male offspring of legal

marriages were treated differentl y from their illegitimate brothers and the sons of non-freeman , when any such presented themselves .

The erection of the Grand Lodge of Scotland did not place bastards in a worse position than that which , as applicants for admission to Freemason lodges , they held when lodges were purely operative associations . And so far from initiation being

in Scotland denied to the class of citizens referred to , innumerable instances , within the memory of Masons still alive , could be given of the initiation of good men and true , the offspring of illicit intercourse . A notable instance of this kind occurred

in the person of Lord Frederick Fitz-Clarence , one of the natural sons of William IV . Made under the French Constitution , he was affiliated in a Scotch Lodge , was Depute Grand Master in 1840 , and on the death of the Earl of Eothes , was elected to be Grand Master Mason of Scotland , which office he held during 1841-42 . The siu o £