wide
influence in the Ancient and Accepted Scotch Rite, and a high authority
also on the ritual, antiquities, history, and literature of Masonry.
Under his guidance, the Scotch Rite extended and became dominant. Hence,
when the Italian patriot Mazzini is said to have projected the
centralization of high grade Masonry, he could find no person in the
whole fraternity more suited by his position and influence to
collaborate with him. Out of this secret partnership there was begotten
on September 20, 1870--that is to say, on the very day when the Italian
troops entered the Eternal City--a Supreme Rite and Central Organisation
of Universal High Grade Masonry, the act of creation being signed by the
American Grand Master and the Italian liberator, the two founders also
sharing the power between them. A Supreme Dogmatic Directory was created
at Charleston, with Pike at its head, under the title of Sovereign
Pontiff of Universal Freemasonry. Mazzini took over the Supreme
Executive, having Rome as its centre, under the title of Sovereign Chief
of Political Action.

If we now recur to the statements that the genuine Templar Baphomet and
the skull of Jacques de Molay had been deposited at Charleston for the
space of seventy years, and that Albert Pike was Grand Master of the
Supreme Council of the Ancient and Accepted Scotch Rite in that city, we
shall understand why it was that the new institution was termed the New
Reformed Palladian Rite, or the Reformed Palladium. Subsequently, five
Central Grand Directories were established--at Washington for North
America, Monte Video for South America, Naples for Europe, Calcutta for
the Eastern World, and Port Louis in Mauritius for Africa. A Sovereign
Universal Administrative Directory was fixed at Berlin subsequently to
the death of Mazzini. As a result of this astute organisation, Albert
Pike is said to have held all Masonry in the hollow of his hand, by
means of a twofold apparatus--the Palladium and the Scotch Rite. During
all his remaining days, and he lived to a great age, he laboured
indefatigably in both causes, and the world at the present moment is
filled with the organisation that he administered.

Four persons are cited as having been coadjutors in his own country--his
old friend Gallatin Mackey, in honourable memory among Masons; a
Scotchman named Longfellow, whom some French writers have ludicrously
confused with the poet; one Holbrook, about whom there are few
particulars