TRAVELING FREEMASONS. As early as the time of Solomon the Tyrian and Sidouian builders traveled to foreign countries, to exercise their calling. They visited Judea and built the temple at Jerusalem. They went to Rome, and furnished the idea and form of the Colleges of Artists and Builders, whose history extended through the whole period of the Roman empire. These Colleges were succeeded by the Building Corporations of the middle ages. All of these societies seem to be identical, possessed the same character istics, especially the practice of traveling from place to place, to erect public buildings, as their services might be needed. They traveled through all the countries of Europe; the numerous Gothic churches, monasteries, and cathedrals which are there found are the monuments of their skill. Protected by the charters of the clerical and secular powers, and united in one great society for the construction of each great building, as the cathedrals, etc., these societies erected those gigantic monuments—many of them larger than the temple of Solomon—generally termed Gothic, which excite our amazement. We find those traveling societies everywhere. They were composed of members from Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, France, England, Scotland, and other countries, and united under very similar constitutions; for instance, at the erection of the convent of Batalha, in Portugal, about A. D. 1400 ; of the minster of Strasburg, 1015 to 1439; that of Cologne, 950 and 1211 to 1365; of the cathedral of Meissen, in the tenth century; of the cathedral of Milan, the convent of Monte Cassino, and of the most remarkable buildings of the British isles. That these societies of traveling builders at last gave rise to one, not occupied with actual building—that is to say specula{ ive Masonry, is demonstrated beyond a doubt. Among their symbols were the square, the plumb, the compasses, which are among the most important emblems of modern Free masonry. They held a convention at Ratisbon in 1459, where it was resolved to constitute a Grand Lodge at Stras= burg, of which the architect of that cathedral, for the time being, should be, ex-officio, the Grand Master. We have a
copy of the constitutions, charges, rules, etc., of this Frater nity in Latin, and some of them are almost, verbatim et literatim, the same as many of our own which we designate "the Ancient Charges." An intelligent Freemason who visited Cologne, in 1847, thus writes: "During the interval between 1248 and 1323, there were not only fifty Masters, and three times as many Fellow-Crafts, daily employed, but a large number of Entered Apprentices from all parts of Christendom, who had come to study the operative and speculative branches of the art, and who carried away with them the principles which directed the erection c f almost every Gothic monument of the age. After the secession of the Masons from the church, the works were suspended, leaving only the choir, with its side aisle, completed." This structure, commenced by the traveling Masons six centuries ago, has, within a few years, been finished after the original plans. Another writer,* remarking on the same class of builders, says: "The architects of all the sacred edifices of the Latin church, whenever such arose—North, South, East, and West—thus derived their science from the same central school; obeyed in their designs the same hierarchy; were directed in their constructions by the same principles of propriety and taste; kept up with each other, in the most distant parts, to which they might be sent, the most constant correspondence; and rendered every minute improvement the property of the whole body, and a new conquest of the art. The result of this unanimity was that, at each succes sive period of the monastic dynasty, on whatever point a new monastry or church might be erected, it resembled all those raised at the same period in every other place, however distant from it, as if both had been built in the same place by the same artist.- For instance, we find, at particular epochs, churches as far distant from each other as the north of Scotland and the south of Italy to be minutely similar in all the essential characteristics."