son's action in
regard to the Bank, some of the machinations of the Bank itself. He
surmounted it successfully, though not without a certain loss of
popularity. We English have some reason to speak well of him in that he
resisted the temptation to embroil his country with ours when a
rebellion in Canada offered an opportunity which a less prudent man
might very well have taken. For the rest, he carried on the government
of the country on Jacksonian lines with sufficient fidelity not to
forfeit the confidence of the old man who watched and advised him,
sympathetically but not without anxiety, from his "Hermitage" in
Tennessee.

One singular episode may conveniently be mentioned here, though the
incident in which it originated rather belongs to the Jacksonian epoch.
This is not the place to discuss the true nature of that curious
institution called Freemasonry. Whatever its origin, whether remote and
derived from Solomon's Temple as its devotees assert, or, as seems more
intrinsically probable, comparatively modern and representing one of the
hundreds of semi-mystical fads which flourished in the age of
Cagliostro, it had acquired considerable importance in Europe at the end
of the eighteenth century. At some unknown date it was carried across
the Atlantic, and sprouted vigorously in America; but it does not seem
to have been taken particularly seriously, until the States were
startled by an occurrence which seemed more like part in what is known
in that country as "a dime novel" than a piece of history.

A journalist named Morgan, who had been a Freemason, announced his
intention of publishing the inviolable secrets of the Society. The
announcement does not seem to have created any great sensation; probably
the majority of Americans were as sceptical as is the present writer as
to the portentous nature of the awful Unspeakabilities which so many
prosperous stock-brokers and suburban builders keep locked in their
bosoms. But what followed naturally created a sensation of the most
startling kind. For on the morrow of his announcement Morgan disappeared
and never returned. What happened to him is not certainly known. A body
was found which may or may not have been his. The general belief was
that he had been kidnapped and murdered by his fellow-Craftsmen, and,
indeed, it really seems the natural inference from the acknowledged
facts that at least some one connected with the Brotherhood was
responsible for his fate. A viol