Northern District of New-York, to wit:

BE IT REMEMBERED, That on the fourteenth 50 day of August, in the fifty-first year of the independence of the United States of America, A. D. 1826,

LS William Morgan, of the said district, hath deposited

in this office the title of a book, the right whereof 550 he claims as author, in the words following wit: "Illustrations of Masonry, by one of the fraternity, who has devoted thirty years to the subject. 'God said, let there be light and there was light.'

In conformity to the act of Congress of the United States, entitled "an act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies, during the times therein mentioned ;" and also to the act entitled "an act supplementary to the act entitled 'an act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies during the times therein mentioned,' and extending the benefits thereof to the arts of designing, engraving, and etching historical and other prints."

R. R. LANSING,

Clerk of the Northern Dist. of N. York.

INTRODUCTION.

In the abscence of the author, or rather compiler of the following work, who was kidnapped and carried away from the village of Batavia, on the 11th day of September, 1826, by a number of Freemasons, it evolves upon the publisher to attempt to set forth some of the leading views that governed those who embarked in the undertaking.

To contend with prejudice, and to struggle against customs and opinions, which superstition, time, and ignorance have hallowed requires time, patience, and magnanimity. When we begin to pull down the strong holds of error, the batteries we level against them, though strong and powerful and victorious at last, are at first received with violence; and when in our conquering career we meet with scoffs and revilings from the besieging partisans of untenable positions, it the more forcibly impresses us we are but men; and that in every work of reformation and renovation we must encounter various difficulties. For a full conformation of our statement we might refer to the history of the world. not our intention however, to give a full detail of the whims and caprices of man—to bring forth the historic records of other years as proofs of the windings and shiftings of the various characters who have "Strutted their brief hour on life's stage," in order to convince, that customs, associations, and institutions are like the lives at

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the authors and abettors, fleeting and fragile. Many of them rise up as bubbles on the ocean, and die away. Circumstances give them existence, and when these causes cease to exist, they go into the same gulph of oblivion as countless exploded opinions and tenets have gone before them. The mind that formed and planned them goes on in its dazzling flight, bounding over barrier after barrier, till it has arrived at the ultimate goal of consummation.

The daily occurrences before us bring forth the full conviction, that the emanation from the God of light is gradually ascending to regions of greater intellectual brilliancy.

When we view man, in the infancy of society, as in the childhood of his existence, he is weak, powerless, and defenceless; but in his manhood and riper years, he has grown to his full stature, and stands forth in commanding attitude, the favored and acknowledged lord of the world. For his comfort and well being, as a member of society, rules and regulations are necessary. In, the various stages of his progress, these systematic improvements undergo various changes, according to circumstances and situations.—What is proper and necessary in one grade of society, is wholly useless, and may be alarming in another. Opinions and usages, that go down in tradition, and interfere not with our improve-. ments in social concerns, adhere to us more closely, and become entwined in all our feelings. It is to this we owe our bigotted attachment to antiquity—it is this that demands from us a superstitious reverence for the opinions and practices of men of former times, and closes the ear against truth, and blinds the eyes to the glare of new light and new accessions of knowledge; through which medium only can they break in upon the mind.

We have within ourselves the knowledge, and every where around us the proofs that we are beings destined not to stand still. In our present state of advancement, we look with pity on the small progress of our Fathers in arts and sciences, and social institutions; and when compared with our elevated rank, we have just cause of pride and of grateful feelings.—They did well for the times in which they lived, but to the ultimatum of perfectability we are nearer--and in the monuments we hare before us of the skill and genius of our times and