and operative professors; and the beautiful columns, known amongst us by the names of WisDOM, STRENGTH, and BEAUTY, were brought to perfection amongst that people. Pythagoras also invented an invaluable proposition, which he called the Eupra, because it forms a grand basis for all the laborious calculations of operative architecture. This indefatigable Mason carried his astronomical studies to such perfection, as absolutely to discover the true system of the universe, by placing the sun in the centre, round which the planets made their various revolutions. From this system originated the name of our science, Mεopavsw; and the representation of the great luminary which invigorates all nature with its beams, was placed in the centre of his lodge, as an emblem of the union of speculative with operative Masonry; which had been before practised by` King Solomon in the middle chamber of his temple.

"Greece now abounded with the best architects, sculptors, statuaries, painters, and other fine designers, most of them educated at the academies of Athens and Sicyon, who instructed many artists and fellow-crafts to be the best operators upon earth; so that the nations of Asia and Africa, who had taught the Greeks, were now taught by them. No country but Greece could now boast of such men as Mycon, Phidias, Demon, Androcides, Meton, Anaxagoras, Di

pœnus and Scyllis, Glycon, Alcamenes, Praxiteles, Polycletus, Lysippus, Peneus, Euphronor, Perseus, Philostratus, Zeuxis, Apollodorus, Parbasius, Timanthes, Eupompus, Pamphilus, Apelles, Artemones, Socrates, Eudoxus, Metrodorus who wrote of Masonry, and the excellent Theodorus Cyrenæus, who amplified geometry and published the art analytic, the master of the divine Plato, from whose school came Zenocrates, and Aristotle, the preceptor of Alexander the Great."*

As the Grecian arts, manners, and language

became propagated throughout the world, their system of Masonry, together with the name, accompanied them. The Druidical memoranda were made in the Greek character, for the Druids had been taught Masonry by Pythagoras himself; † who had communicated its arcana to them, under the name he had assigned to it in his own country. This distinguishing appellation (Megave), in the subsequent declension and oblivion of the science, during the dark ages of barbarity and superstition, might be corrupted into MASONRY; as its remains, being merely operative, were confined to a few hands, and these artificers and working Masons.

Throughout this work I have used the appellation MASONRY, as the acknowledged designation of our science in its present form; though it was

*North. Const., chap. 5. part. 1.

+ Amm. Marcell.

not known by that name, during any of the periods I have attempted to elucidate.

The true definition of Masonry is, a science which includes all others, and teaches mankind their duty to God, their neighbour, and themselves. This definition evidently conveys two distinct ideas; the former of which is termed OPERATIVE, and the latter SPECULATIVE MASONRY. Architecture, being a science of the greatest use and benefit to man in his natural state, was principally cultivated by the Masons of that race who had separated from the faithful worshippers of God, and migrated into distant realms, where, for want of an intercommunity with the Sons of Light, the noble science of Masonry would soon be forgotten, and operative architecture might, by their posterity, be mistaken for the science of which it was, in reality, only a constituent part of an inferior division: and this mistake would not be rectified, until a renewed association with the true Masons convinced them practically of their error, which was effected at the building of King Solomon's Temple. And hence it has happened that many excellent and well-meaning Masons have been led to conclude, that operative Masonry only was known and practised by our ancient Brethren before the building of that sacred edifice.

But, if religion be intimately connected with Masonry, and essentially necessary to its existence,

then we must look for it under some unequivocal and universal form. Now operative architecture is an insulated science, and depends on some others to bring it to perfection; therefore the perfection of Masonry cannot be found in architecture alone and this more particularly, because the most stately structures of antiquitiy were erected by idolatrous nations to the honour of false gods, and consequently in defiance of the true God, and to the prejudice of that religion on which we assert that Masonry is founded. It could not then be Lux or Masonry which stimulated them to a renunciation of God, but a perverted system, which bore but a slight and fading resemblance to that science, which gradually sunk into oblivion as idolatry was disseminated over the face of the earth. Nor can the declension of Masonry, in different ages, be attributed to any other cause for when the pure worship of the true God was the most prevalent, we find Masonry blazing forth in its native and unsullied lustre. Thus it shone amidst the darkness during the life of Adam, of Enoch, and of Noah; thus it displayed its radiance in the time of Abraham, Moses, and Solomon; thus the strong traces of its existence are discoverable in the time of Zerubabel and Jesus Christ; and thus has it flourished in all ages, when sober religion has characterized the manners and influenced the morals of civil society.

We find that where architecture was cultivated as an exclusive science, its professors became much more expert than those nations who practised Masonry as an universal system. Hence, when Solomon had determined to erect a temple to the living God, he was obliged to apply for assistance to the Tyrians, who were, at that time, the most expert architects in the world. It is true the Israelites were not entirely ignorant of that art, having cultivated operative Masonry from the time that their ancestors in Egypt built the cities of Pithom and Raamses. At the building of this temple, the chief architect was a widow's son of the tribe of Naphtali, and consequently an Israelite by his mother's side, though his father was a man of Tyre. He had been brought up under the patronage of Abibalus, the father of Hiram, King of Tyre, and was beyond all competition the best designer and artificer upon earth.

This temple was acknowledged, by all nations, to be the utmost effort of human genius; and that the united excellencies of all the structures in the world would have been inferior to it in beauty and splendour, either for grandeur of design, or delicacy of execution; which shews that, when speculative and operative Masonry became thus united and blended together under the wisest speculative Mason, the strongest operative Mason, and the most beautiful designer, and employed in