A Winter with Robert Burns (Electronic book text)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3II.FREEMASONRY. In poverty's low barren vale Thick mists obscure involved me round; Tho' oft I turn'd the wistful eye, No ray of fame was to be found: Thou found'st me like the morning sun, That melts the fogs in limpid air, The friendless bard and rustic song Became alike thy fostering care. textit{Hurnt. A flattering letter from Blacklock having been communicated to Burns, he made preparations for a visit to Edinburgh, but he did not wait upon Blacklock for weeks after his arrival. Soon after he reached that city, he proudly writes that he had been there hailed by the Grand-Master- Mason of Scotland, in a numerous and elegant masonic meeting, as " textit{Caledonia's Bard."" As he set great stress on this circumstance, and as he elsewhere tells that he had been himself Oft honour'd with supreme command, Presiding o'er the sons of light, it here becomes proper, for the better understanding of the details which follow, to initiate, in some degree, the fair sex, as well as those whom masons designate the neutral world, in the hitherto unfathomable mysteries of masonry. Pass we, then, over Egypt, and Syria, and Greece, and the earlier history of The Order, and leave to their slumbers the Ionian architects, the Pythagonian Fraternity, and those of The Craftwho built Solomon's templeit will be sufficient for our present purpose to state that a trading fraternity of masons, joiners, architects, smiths, and c. existed in Europe during the earlier ages; that many special favours were conferred on them by the Roman See, and particularly the exclusive privilege of erecting those magnificent buildings which the pride of the Church of Rome had prompted her to rear; that several of the fraternity, under the auspices of the Church, travelled into Scotland about the beginning of the ...