The Antiquity Of Stone Buildings In England.

THE ANTIQUITY OF STONE BUILDINGS IN ENGLAND .

BY MASONIC STUDENT .

THOUGH it might seem at first si ght that the heading of this paper had little to do with Freemasonry proper , yet that such would he a mistaken impression I trust and think the following remarks will prove . In one sense , indeed , the subject has necessarily most marked bearing on the growth of the building art and the progress of the building societies ; and

rightly or wrongly , Freemasonry in this country , alike by our professed historians and our gild legends , has been all but indissolubly linked on to the operative sodalities . And if to-day we find , or think we find , as we survey the past history of the building confraternities , and the facts , —I mean the historic facts connected with Freemasonry , —that hardly enough attention has been paid to Hermeticismand the possibility and probabilitof an Hermetic

, y Society running along " pari passu " with Craft Associations , yet at the same time the main line of true Masonic history runs through the lodges of working Masons , and the seventeenth century Masonry , to the speculative Grand Lodge of 1717 .

The gild legends all point to building bodies working in England under Albanus , etc ., and that the chroniclers declare with one voice that all these " artifices , " " csementarii , " " opifices , " " latomi " ( though this word is of later use ) , call them what you will , came almost entirely from . Gaul and Germany and Italy and Some , no doubt having gone from Home to Germany and Gaul . It is admitted by all writersI believethat when Julius C _ esar landed in

, , Britain , stone buildings , if any , were of the roughest description . No doubt these were " cairns " and "barrows , " with internal stone-work , but the smooth ashlar work was comparatively unknown . The Romans , in their civilizing power , and with their conquering legions , brought with them also their " collegia opificium , " or " fabrorum , " whether attached to their temples or their cohorts , and Musgrave has given us proof , and there is still extant evidence at

Goodwood , of such " Collegia " existing in this country . With the beginning of the fifth century , at any rate , the Eoman rule ceased practically for good in England , though there is also testimony that in the fourth century buildings and architects were many in England , and that about the early middle part of the fourth century many English architects and workmen went to Gaul , and to Autnn especially , as Eumenius , the panegyrist of Constantine , declares . If it be true that the Eoman wall in the north was built originally of turf , it was

afterwards built clearly of stone , by the Romans , and though Bede is a little uncertain apparently about the latter work , which he seems to fix after the fall of Rome , yet there is no doubt , that they , the Romans , built the wall , and on it Masons' marks , like on many other great Roman works , have been found . My friend , Bro . E . "W . Shaw , found them himself . Mr . Elton , in his recent valuable work , " Origin of English History , " seems

to think that Gildas and Bede drew from classical rather than from native sources , and that their accounts are untrustworthy . Bede seems to confound the work of Hadrian and Severus with that of Antonine , commonly called Graham ' s Dyke . Agricola was the first who probably made an earth Vallum to keep off the Picts and Scots . Hadrian built the old Roman wall , to which Severus and Antonine added , and in the latter case with supplemental earthworks ; but as Mr . Elton says , Bede ' s statement of a subsequent advent of a Roman legion