delivered from this state of physical and moral thraldom, by chancing to encounter an individual, a native of the sun, who had emigrated to earth, where he had been the familiar genius of Socrates; at whose death, being of a restless and wandering disposition, he had finally sought a new home in the moon. This nomadic demon, having taken a great fancy to the persecuted stranger, succeeded in effecting his escape from his tyrants; and finally proposed to conduct him to the lunar metropolis, an offer which Bergerac at once accepted. While on their journey they entered an hotel for rest and refreshment; and the description of this establishment is so quaint and fanciful, that I shall give it in our author's own words.

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They came to summon us to table," he says; " and I followed my conductor into a saloon richly furnished, where, however, I saw nothing prepared for us to eat. Such a solitude of meat, when I was perishing with hunger, induced me to inquire where they had laid the cloth. I did not, however, listen to his reply, for at that instant three or four waiters, by desire of the landlord, approached me, and with great civility removed all my clothes. This new ceremony surprised me so greatly, that I do not know how my guide, who asked me by what I would commence my meal, was able to wring from me the words, some soup. I had scarcely uttered them, however, before I became conscious of the most delicious and succulent savour that ever greeted the nostrils of a wealthy glutton. I was anxious to rise from my seat, to seek at once the source of this agreeable vapour, but my new friend prevented me. 'Where do to go?' he asked; 'we will take a walk presently, but now it is time to eat; finish your soup, and then we will send for something else.' And where the devil is the soup?' I rejoined, almost angrily. What!' he inquired, are you not aware that every one here lives on vapour? The culinary art consists in inclosing in large vessels, which are moulded for that purpose, the exhalations which escape from the meat while cooking; and when these have been combined, according to the taste of those who are to partake of them, the vessel is uncorked; and this is done with each in succession, until the end of the repast.'

6

you want

"He had no sooner given me this information than I felt so many agreeable and nourishing vapours enter the room, each in its turn, that in less than ten minutes my appetite was thoroughly appeased. This is not,' he continued, a thing calculated to excite your astonishment, for you cannot have lived so long without having observed that in your own world the cooks and pastrycooks, who eat less than persons of other trades, are always much fatter; and whence comes their corpulence, do you

suppose, if it be not from the vapours by which they are constantly surrounded, and which penetrate their bodies, and thus nourish them?'

"We conversed some time longer, and then we went upstairs to bed.. A man presented himself on the landing-place, who, after having looked at us both attentively, conducted me into a closet where the floor was covered three feet in depth with orange-blossoms, and my demon into another filled with carnations and jasmin. He told me, when he saw I was amazed at this magnificence, that these were the beds of the country. Finally, we each went to rest in our cells, and as soon as I was stretched upon my flowers, I fell sound asleep by the light of about thirty glowworms inclosed in a crystal globe, for no other candles are used there."

On the following morning, when our travellers were about to pursue their journey, the ci-devant associate of Socrates paid their bill with a poem of six lines. "Were we to put up here for a week," said he, we should not spend a sonnet; and I have four about me, besides two epigrams, two odes, and an eclogue." "Ah! would to God that things were managed in the same way in our world!" exclaims Bergerac, with all the feeling of a poet; "I know a goodly number of honest versifiers, who are dying there of hunger, and who would never want for good cheer if they could pay their entertainers in such coin !"

On his arrival at court, the philosopher was confronted with a little Spaniard, who had made his way to the Moon on the back of a bird. Grandees and people alike decided that the two were of the same species; but Bergerac indignantly denied that he was an animal, as the court unanimously declared; and, in order to prove his assertion, he lost no time in acquiring a knowledge of the national language, in which he had no sooner succeeded than an assembly of the states was formally convoked, to hear him sustain a philosophical proposition. As, however, he unfortunately only replied to the questions which were addressed to him by quoting certain passages of Aristotle, it was decided that he was not a man, but in all probability a species of ostrich, "since he carried his head erect, walked upon two feet, and was partially feathered;" and the bird-keeper was accordingly commanded to confine him in a cage.

The conversation of the Castilian, and the attentions of the maids of honour, who were constantly throwing one good thing or another into his prison, afforded him some consolation; but he nevertheless persisted so perseveringly in arguing upon every subject, that he was at last brought to trial, and condemned to declare publicly that the Moon was not a moon, nor the Earth

an earth; when, having fulfilled the conditions of his sentence, he was restored to liberty, and permitted to travel through the lunar regions, accompanied by the Socratic demon.

Various were the sights they saw, and the comments which they elicited from both parties, but especially from Bergerac, who was somewhat discomfited to find that his favourite theories became sadly shaken by his practical experience; and that he was occasionally compelled to admit that the inhabitants of Luna were not quite so mad on many points as sundry of his friends in the nether world. Among other things which struck him as extraordinary, he remarked, that when the Lunarians were engaged in war, two armies were never suffered to go into action until it had been clearly ascertained that their strength was precisely equal, and that, in the contest, might could not overcome right; an arrangement which probably tended more than any other would have done to preserve the common peace. Then, again, the construction of their cities struck him as singularly rational. In the sedentary towns, where the inhabitants, having established themselves for a permanency, were satisfied to live and die without seeking for a change, the houses were built upon a principle which enabled their tenants during bad weather, intense cold, or high winds, by means of powerful screws to sink them beneath the level of the soil, and thus protect themselves and their property from danger; while the moving cities were constructed on wheels, and each separate tenement provided with sails and bellows, to impel it in whatever direction its owners desired to emigrate, at the change of the season. For a while he was embarrassed on discovering that there were no sundials in the country; but he soon became convinced that they were not needed, as all the inhabitants made so perfect a dial of their teeth, that when they wished to know the hour, the shadow of their noses falling upon them at once decided the question.

At first Bergerac had felt inclined to despise a people who were ignorant of the uses of a host of objects without which human beings would be helpless; but he gradually recanted his error, as he became convinced that these were mere superfluities, indicating rather moral helplessness than ingenuity; but that to which he could not so easily reconcile himself was the fact that, in their philosophical controversies, he was generally worsted by the Lunarians, who laughed at his prejudices, and treated him like a schoolboy, while he was moreover reluctantly compelled to admit his inferiority.

At length, however, he grew weary of his singular existence, and began to pine for home. He according applied for his

passport, which the authorities, who were by no means anxious to detain him, supplied without hesitation, to the great regret of his faithful companion and friend, the demon, who behaved with unfailing kindness to the last; for, on finding that Bergerac was resolved upon departure, he at once expressed his desire to serve him, and demanded to know in what part of the world he would prefer to land. "I told him," says our author, "that as most of the citizens of Paris were anxious, once in their lives, to make a journey to Rome, and believed that, having accomplished this, there remained nothing to be done or seen, I should be obliged to him if he would enable me to imitate them."

His request met with a ready compliance; his obliging friend caught him up like a whirlwind, and after travelling thus for a day and a night, safely deposited him on the classic soil of Italy.

For a time the intrepid aeronaut had considerable difficulty in defending himself from the dogs, who, being accustomed to bay the moon, scented him out, and pursued him wherever he went; but gradually the odour of earth prevailed over the lunar vapour; old habits and old associations resumed their empire; he began to think, and feel, and act like his fellow-men; and he had no sooner become convinced of this, than he made his way to Rome, where his cousin, M. de Cyrano, had, no doubt, little difficulty in recalling to his recollection the unpleasant fact that, in order to reach his native country, it would be useless for him to set forth not merely with a pocket full of sonnets and serenades, but even with a portmanteau crammed with tragedies and epics; or to expect to satisfy his appetite on the road by inhaling the fumes which might chance to emanate from the hotel kitchens. Whether he did, in fact, volunteer this warning I know not; but thus much, at least, our author asserts, that he generously supplied him with a sum of money which enabled him to reach Marseilles in a style conformable to his rank, and in a more consistent costume than that in which he had taken his departure from the environs of Paris.

A CENTURY OF FREEMASONRY.*

BY KENNETH R. H. MACKENZIE, F.S.A.

No. 3.t

THE ambition of the French Masons was gratified. After many years of dissension and rebellion, the Grand Lodge, that was to do so much, was established. England had tacitly ceded to them the right of self-government by a Grand Lodge of their own, and it now remained for those who had so continually agitated the question of independence, to show practically what the beneficial effects of this independence would be. However, like most promises, this also was destined to remain unfulfilled. Circumstance, perhaps, or direct influence, prevented the good effects from becoming visible. No sooner was the Grand Lodge of France its own master, than it became powerless and disjointed. It put forth that "Book of Constitutions," which we have already examined, and then lapsed into a condition of much insignificance and trouble. And, indeed, what could be expected of an assemblage, the head of which had neglected to attend its meetings for the space of twenty-eight years, for there is not an atom of evidence to show that the Count of Clermont, from his election, in 1743, to the time of his death, in 1771, ever attended Grand Lodge,‡ either when it was still dependent on London, or after 1755, when it became self-governing. Truly, when the Freemasons elected a prince of the blood (and a Bourbon into the bargain) their Grand Master, they obtained that which was but of nominal value! The intimate

connection there exists between princes and dancing-masters induced Bourbon to give his Brother Lacorne, dancing-master and confidant to Clermont, the dignity of Substitute; § and

*"Geschichte der Freimaurerei in Frankreich, aus ächten Urkunden dargestellt (1725-1830), von Georg Kloss." [History of Freemasonry in France, eliminated from trustworthy Documents.] 2 vols. Darmstadt,

1852.

+ Continued from Vol. I. pp. 595-609.

Kloss, vol. i. p. 120. See art. 2, vol. i.
p. 600.

Lacorne, a dancing-master, had somehow wormed himself into the confidence of Clermont, and thus became the " Worshipful Brother Lacorne, substitute of our very Illustrious Grand Master and PrinceMason, Louis de Bourbon." Oh, bathos!