Reprint Of Scarce, Or Curicus, Books On Freemasonry.

place where he lived . He is treating of an Egj-ptian ~ prince , born in the century preceding tho Trojan Avar , a time in which ancient Egypt was in its greatest splendour . Now this period , so remote , can have furnished no public memoirs to any other writer either of Ital y or Greece . But it is very natural to suppose that a citizen of Alexandria may have been master of memoirs taken , in the confusion of war , from the sacred archives of Egyptand unknown even to the E tian priests of his timesand

, gyp ; , besides , those priests who accompanied Sethos in his travels , may have been the authors of them . It was to give a like sanction to her history that Madam do Scudory , in the preface to her Cyrus , a hero posterior to ours by seven or ei ght hundred years , studies to have it thought the translation of an ancient manuscript found in tho Vatican library . In tho second laceas our author mentions the sciences of the E tians

p , gyp only comparatively with those of the Greeks , from whom alone the Eomans had any knowledge of ancient E gypt ; the second century , or the latter end of tho first and the beginning of tho second , in which ho lived , was the most proper time for this comparison—a time which may justly be termed the most favourable to the sciences both for the Eomans and Greeks , then under the same empire . M . do St . Evremont has already remarked that tho of

days Augustus were only noted for poetry , and that AVC must look something farther back for the days of eloquence . Our best writers , in point of painting and sculpture , M . Fclibien and M . do piles , seem , on the other hand , to refer tho period of sciences , among the Eomans , to the interval of time included in the reign of Vespasian and the Antonines . Tho names of Pliny , Ptolemyand Gaiienusalone ive us reason to fix their greatest

, , g emineney thereabouts ; and the reader will find in this life sundry evidences to prove that Alexandria was then their principal seat , even for the Eomans themselves . Those considerations were sufficient to justify our author with regard to what I have thought proper to omit on this head , and may perhaps give him more credit with regard to that little I have retained .

LICENCE . —By order of the Lord Keeper of the Seals , I have read a manuscript , entitled The Life of Sethos , taken from private memoirs of tho ancient Egyptians , translated from a Greek manuscri pt . This work , Avhich contains excellent lessons of the most refined morality , and is full of solid and the most extensive learning , cannot fail of being equally instructive and curiouS- LANCELOT . Paris , Jan . 29 . 1731 .

The Rite Of Misraim.

THE RITE OF MISRAIM .

BY JOHN AA . SIMONS . * p * 9 AVING lately obtained a copy of a Avork , entitled the Masonic Order O of Misraim , referred to b y Dr . Mackey , in his Lexicon-, I fiaA'e f g concluded that some authentic details of tlie E gyptian Bite nv > ht _ he acceptable to the present generation of masons , especially as the Eite and its history are in a forei tongueThis systemlike others

gn . , many that have occasionally come to light on the continent of Europe is evidently manufactured from tho " Ancient and Accepted Eite , " aided by a . liberal imagination , and a free recourse to sacred and profane history and is due to the inventive faculties of Marc , Joseph , and Michel , Bedarride . According to Marc , the author of the book from which these details are extracted , the Order was founded "in the first age of the Avorld "—beyond