officers into the obscure and even the more respectable Lodges, so that the officers were frequently disgusted in the Lodges by the insolent behaviour of their own soldiers under the mask of Masonic Brotherhood and Equality--and this behaviour became not unfrequent even out of doors. He asserts with great confidence that the troops were much corrupted by these intrigues--and that when they sometimes declared, on service, that they would not fire _on their Brethren_, the phrase had a particular reference to their Masonic Fraternity, because they recognised many of their Brother Masons in every crowd.--And the corruption was by no means confined to Paris and its neighbourhood, but extended to every place in the kingdom where there was a Municipality and a Mason Lodge. Mr. Lefranc then turns our attention to many peculiarities in the Revolution, which have a resemblance to the practices in Free Masonry. Not only was the arch rebel the Duke of Orleans, the Grand Master, but the chief actors in the Revolution, Mirabeau, Condorcet, Rochefoucault, and others, were distinguished office-bearers in the great Lodges. He says that the distribution of France into departments, districts, circles, cantons, &c. is perfectly similar, with the same denominations, to a distribution which he had remarked in the correspondence of the Grand Orient[20]. The President's hat in the National Assembly is copied from that of a _Tres Venerable Grand Maitre_.--The scarf of a Municipal Officer is the same with that of a Brother Apprentice.--When the Assembly celebrated the Revolution in the Cathedral, they accepted of the highest honours of Masonry by passing under the _Arch of Steel_, formed by the drawn swords of two ranks of Brethren.--Also it is worthy of remark, that the National Assembly protected the meetings of Free Masons, while it peremptorily prohibited every other private meeting. The obligation of laying aside all stars, ribbands, crosses, and other honourable distinctions, under the pretext of Fraternal Equality, was not merely a prelude, but was intended as a preparation for the destruction of all civil distinctions, which took place almost at the beginning of the Revolution,--_and the first proposal of a surrender_, says Mr. Lefranc, _was made by a zealous Mason_.--He farther observes, that the horrible and sanguinary oaths, the daggers, death-heads, cross-bones, the imaginary combats with the murderers of Hiram, and many other gloomy ceremonies, have a natural tendency to harden the heart, to remove its natural disgust at deeds of horror, and have paved the way for those shocking barbarities which have made the name of Frenchmen abhorred over all Europe. These deeds were indeed perpetrated by a mob of fanatics; but the principles were promulgated and fostered by persons who style themselves philosophers.