CHAPTER XI.
FEMALE FREEMASONRY Last on the list of our recent witnesses who have had a hand in creating the Question of Lucifer--not actually last in the order of time but the least in importance to our purpose--is M.A.C.de la Rive, author of "Child and Woman in Universal Freemasonry." He very fairly fulfils the presumption which is warranted by his name; he does not pretend to have come forth from the turbid torrent of Satanism and Masonry which is carrying multitudes into the abyss and effacing temples and thrones in its furious course.

He has been content, like a sensible person, to stand on bank or brink and watch the rage and flow.

He does not tell us anywhere in his narrative that he is himself a Mason; he has no personal acquaintance with Satan; he has not been guilty of magic, nor has he assisted at a Black Mass.

He belongs to a wholly different order of witnesses, and he has produced what is in its way a genuine book, which does not pretend to be more than a careful compilation from rare but published sources, while we can all of us defer to the erudition of a Frenchman who has actually spent on collecting his materials the almost unheard-of space of twelve months.

The result is correctly described as "grand in octavo, 746 pages," and is really an inflated piece of Masonic chronology, exceedingly ill-balanced, but, at the same time, undeniably useful.