dows ascends to
heaven, and the plain of Dappah, in immediate contiguity to the city, is
a vast charnel-house where innumerable multitudes of dead bodies are
flung naked to the vultures. The English Mason will at once recognise
that of all places in the world Calcutta is most suited to be a Mecca of
the Fraternity and the capital of English India. The Kadosch of the
Scotch Rite, the Sublime Chosen Master of the Royal Arch, the Commander
of the White and Black Eagle of the rite of Herodom, the perfectly
initiated Grand Inspector of the Scotch Philosophical Rite, the Elect
Brother of the Johannite Rite of Zinnendorf, and the Brother of the Red
Cross of Swedenborg, a thousand other dignitaries of a thousand
illuminations, gather in the Grand Masonic Temple, and, as the Doctor
gravely tells us, are employed in cursing Catholicity. By a special
conjunction of the planets, the Doctor, on reaching head-quarters, had
immediate intelligence that the great Phileas Walder had himself
recently arrived on a secret mission from Charleston. There also he made
acquaintance with another luminary of devildom, by name Hobbs, who
presided at the important proceedings which resulted in the damnation of
Carbuccia. Brother Hobbs, possessed of much experience in Lucifer, gave
many assurances concerning the incessant apparitions of The Master of
Evil to all worthy persons. Now the Doctor, by virtue of his Misraim
patent, was as much a priest for ever according to the Melchisedeck of
Masonry, as if he had been born without father or mother, but at the
moment he had not received the perfect initiation of the Palladium;
technically, therefore, he had no right to participate in the Supreme
Mysteries. However, it is needless to say that he had arrived in the
nick of time to be present at a ceremony which takes place only once in
ten years, provided that he was willing to undergo the trifle of a
preliminary ordeal.

On the same evening a select company of initiates proceeded in hired
carriages through the desolation of Dappah, under the convoy of
initiated coachmen, for the operation of a great satanic solemnity. At
an easy distance from the city is the Sheol of the native Indians, and
hard by the latter place there is a mountain 500 feet high and 2000
long, on the summit of which seven temples are erected, communicating
one with another by subterranean passages in the rock. The total absence
of pagodas make it evident that these temples are devoted