press. But on the Continent during the eighteenth century, Freemasonry
excited profound suspicion and fear on the part of statesmen who knew
perfectly well their friends from their foes; and whose precautions were,
from their point of view, justified by the results.

I shall not enter into the deep question of the origin of Freemasonry.
One uninitiate, as I am, has no right to give an opinion on the great
questions of the mediaeval lodge of Kilwinning and its Scotch degrees; on
the seven Templars, who, after poor Jacques Molay was burnt at Paris,
took refuge on the Isle of Mull, in Scotland, found there another Templar
and brother Mason, ominously named Harris; took to the trowel in earnest,
and revived the Order;--on the Masons who built Magdeburg Cathedral in
876; on the English Masons assembled in Pagan times by "St. Albone, that
worthy knight;" on the revival of English Masonry by Edwin, son of
Athelstan; on Magnus Grecus, who had been at the building of Solomon's
Temple, and taught Masonry to Charles Martel; on the pillars Jachin and
Boaz; on the masonry of Hiram of Tyre, and indeed of Adam himself, of
whose first fig-leaf the masonic apron may be a type--on all these
matters I dare no more decide than on the making of the Trojan Horse, the
birth of Romulus and Remus, or the incarnation of Vishnoo.

All I dare say is, that Freemasonry emerges in its present form into
history and fact, seemingly about the beginning of George I.'s reign,
among Englishmen and noblemen, notably in four lodges in the city of
London: (1) at The Goose and Gridiron alehouse in St. Paul's Churchyard;
(2) at The Crown alehouse near Drury Lane; (3) at The Apple Tree tavern
near Covent Garden; (4) at The Rummer and Grapes tavern, in Charnel Row,
Westminster. That its principles were brotherly love and good
fellowship, which included in those days port, sherry, claret, and punch;
that it was founded on the ground of mere humanity, in every sense of the