A Mason's Story.

A MASON'S STORY .

( Continued from page 464 , Vol . VIII . ) IT is a glorious summer ' s day . Not with the sun shining as we see it here , in our cold and humid England , but pouring down with fierce brilliancy 7 on the white turbaned heads of those who are under its rays .

Not , as in northern climes , obscurely bright , But one unclouded blaze of living light . " Reader , the scene is India . " India , the scene of the earliest traditions , " to use the words of Dean Stanley , " and languages of the civilised world ; the birth-place of the mightiest and most widel y spread faith that has ever dawned on the earth ; the scene of those great conflicts betwixt the most absolute

monotheism on the one hand and the most elaborate polytheism on the other ; " the seat of the veiy acme of theology , and the source from which all that is great in astrological science or Masonic symbolism has emanated which has enlightened the world , from the remotely misty ages of dim antiquity to the present time . Who is there among us to whom the name of India does not awaken recollections which thrill his very heart as he thinks of the names of

the Clydes , the Havelocks , the two Lawrences , and all those names which go to make up our glory as a nation , and adorn our history w ith imperishable marks which shall last when we , as a nation , shall be no more ? Calmly gliding over the blue waters of the noble river Ganges is a small boat , whose white sails flap languidly in the slight breeze , and in the boat are seated three menone of whom we recognise as Lord Angleseawho reclines idl r

, , y in the stern , reading the latest news from home while he smokes his "hookah . " The second we may see is our old friend Penrhyn , who seems to be busily engaged in conversation with somebod y whom we have not met before . He , the third party , is a curious spectacle . Long matted hair , hanging profusely over

his horsehair garment ; tangled beard , the growth of perchance scores of years ; deep sunken eyes , the result of years of incessant fast , vig il , and study—proclaim him as a Brahmin of the first order . With that strange pertinacity which always distinguished my loved friend , Falconer is discussing with him the theology 7 of the great Hindoo faith—that faith which , taking its rise in Egypt , spread itself in a more or less varied form over every portion of the universeand has thrown a mighty influence and an unbreakable spell over

, every branch of theology which man has ever thought or dreamt of . The scene was admirably fitted for such a conversation . The version of our own sacred records fixes the creation of man , his location in paradise , his subsequent expulsion therefrom in that locality . The Garden of Eden is supposed to have been situated betwixt the Euphrates and the Tigris , and it was not very far from these rivers where the trio were now sailing . For aught they

knew , the holy steps of the Nazarene might have trod over the ground they had so lately trod , during the period of that memorable sojourn among the Essenes , which Renan has described so graphically . Northward towered the peaks of the Snowy Mountains , known as the Himalayan range , frowning down on them with its yawning chasms and gaping passes , which , in spite of fearful oddsour brave men have held against overwhelming numbers . Westward was

, just discernable the grim old visage of Atlas , round which the ancients wove so many of their mystically beautiful fables , not least of which was the storv of Perseus and the Gorgon , and which they thought , in their rude simplicity , held the heavens and the earth apart in his never-tiring , never-wearied grasp .