word; being (as was to be expected from the temper of the times) both
aristocratic and liberal, admitting to its ranks virtuous gentlemen
"obliged," says an old charge, "only to that religion wherein all men
agree, leaving their particular opinions to themselves: that is, to be
good men and true, or men of honour and honesty, by whatever
denominations or persuasions they may be distinguished; whereby Masonry
becomes the centre of union and means of conciliating true friendship
among persons that otherwise must have remained at a distance."

Little did the honest gentlemen who established or re-established their
society on these grounds, and fenced it with quaint ceremonies, old or
new, conceive the importance of their own act; we, looking at it from a
distance, may see all that such a society involved, which was quite new
to the world just then; and see, that it was the very child of the Ancien
Regime--of a time when men were growing weary of the violent factions,
political and spiritual, which had torn Europe in pieces for more than a
century, and longed to say: "After all, we are all alike in one thing--for
we are at least men."

Its spread through England and Scotland, and the seceding bodies which
arose from it, as well as the supposed Jacobite tendency of certain
Scotch lodges, do not concern us here. The point interesting to us just
now is, that Freemasonry was imported to the Continent exclusively by
English and Scotch gentlemen and noblemen. Lord Derwentwater is said by
some to have founded the "Loge Anglaise" in Paris in 1725; the Duke of
Richmond one in his own castle of Aubigny shortly after. It was through
Hanoverian influence that the movement seems to have spread into Germany.
In 1733, for instance, the English Grand Master, Lord Strathmore,
permitted eleven German gentlemen and good brethren to form a lodge in
Hamburg. Into this English Society was Frederick the Great, when Crown