MASONS, FREE. According to the extravagant and whimsical hypotheses entertained by some of those who have written upon the subject of freemasonry, it is an institution of almost incredible antiquity. We are told by some that it originated with the builders of the tower of Babel, though others are content with tracing it no farther back than the temple of Solomon. If we are to believe them, the institution has been continued down in uninterrupted succession from that very remote time to the present day, through all the changes of governments, religion, civilisation, and knowledge. Against this there exists one very simple, yet fatal, argument, namely, that were this really the case, such an uninterrupted series of tradition must have kept alive and handed down to us much information that has, on the contrary, been utterly lost. Instead of accumulated knowledge, we find that even a technical knowledge of architecture itself has not been so preserved ; else how are we to account for the ignorance which everywhere prevailed with respect to Gothic architecture and its principles almost as soon as the style itself fell into disuse? That there may have been many points of resemblance between the fraternities of masons in the middle ages, and such institutions as those of the Elcusinian mysteries, and the corporation of Ionian architects, is not only possible, but highly probable, because similarity of circumstances would almost necessarily lead to it. Before the invention of printing, when the means of communicating knowledge were few and imperfect, no readier mode presented itself of extending and keeping up the speculative and practical information spread mnong any profession, than by catablishing the profession itself into a community or order, all the members of which would have one object and one interest in common. This would be more particularly the case with regard to architecture, which calls for the co-operation of various branches of science and the mechanical arts, and was moreover for several ages the paramount art, all the other arta of decoration being, as far as they then existed, subservient to it.
The importance of architecture to the chureh, on account of the impressive dignity it conferred upon religious rites and the ministers of religion, naturally Induced the clergy to take it under their especial protection. For a long time not only were ecclesiastics the chief
patrons but almost the chief professors of the art; yet as they had occasion for the assistance of practical artificers in various branches, they admitted them into fellowship with themselves, establishing a kind of order of a mixed character, just as the orders of chivalry com bined at their origin the principles of military and religious discipline. Hence some have supposed freemasonry to have been a branch of chivalry, and to have been established at the time of the Crusades. The more probable hypothesis perhaps is that they were related to each other only in emanating from the same source—from the influence of ecclesiastical power ; and their being so derived would alone account for the mystery and secrecy which the guilds of masons affected; and, together with their zeal in accumulating knowledge for themselves, their desire to confine it to their own body.
By means of these associations the inventions and improvements made in architecture were communicated from one country to another, a circumstance which at once accounts for the sudden spread of pointed or Gothic architecture throughout the whole of the west of Europe ; and at the same time renders it so exceedingly difficult to determine at all satiefactorily where that style actually originated, or what nation contributed most towards its advancement. Owing also to the jealousy with which the masons kept their knowledge to themselves, it is not at all surprising that the history of the art during the middle ages should be involved in so much obscurity that it can now be traced only by its monuments, all documents relative to the study of it having been con cealed as much as possible, even when something of the kind must have been in existence. the causes which led afterwards to the decline of these institutions was, on the one hand, the suspicion with which the church itself began to regard them as societies that might in time acquire an influence not easily watched, and which might be turned against itself; and on the other, the spread of in formation, together with the revival of the arts, which deprived such bodies of their utility and importance, and rendered it impossible for them to confine their knowledge exclusively within their own pale.