* I have read a discourse pronounced in a church at Paris, on the
     decade, so indecent and profane, that the most humble audience of a
     country-puppet show in England would not have tolerated it.

On the principal church of every town was inscribed, “The Temple of Reason;” and a tutelary goddess was installed with a ceremony equally pedantic, ridiculous, and profane.*

* At Havre, the goddess of Reason was drawn on a car by four cart-horses, and as it was judged necessary, to prevent accidents, that the horses should be conducted by those they were accustomed to, the carters were likewise put in requisition and furnished with cuirasses a l’antique from the theatre.  The men, it seems, being neither martial nor learned, were not au fait at this equipment, and concluding it was only a waistcoat of ceremony, invested themselves with the front behind, and the back part laced before, to the great amusement of the few who were sensible of the mistake.

Yet the philosophers did not on this occasion disdain those adventitious aids, the use of which they had so much declaimed against while they were the auxiliaries of Christianity.*

* Mr. Gibbon reproaches the Christians with their adoption of the allurements of the Greek mythology.—­The Catholics have been more hostilely despoiled by their modern persecutors, and may retort that the religion of reason is a more gross appeal to the senses than the darkest ages of superstition would have ventured on.

Music, processions, and decorations, which had been banished from the ancient worship, were introduced in the new one, and the philosophical reformer, even in the very attempt to establish a religion purely metaphysical, found himself obliged to inculcate it by a gross and material idolatry.*—­

     * The French do not yet annex any other idea to the religion of
     reason than that of the female who performs the part of the goddess.

Thus, by submitting his abstractions to the genius of the people, and the imperfections of our nature, perhaps the best apology was offered for the errors of that worship which had been proscribed, persecuted, and ridiculed.

Previous to the tenth day, on which a celebration of this kind was to take place, a Deputy arrived, accompanied by the female goddess:* that is, (if the town itself did not produce one for the purpose,) a Roman dress of white satin was hired from the theatre, with which she was invested—­her head covered with a red cap, ornamented with oak leaves—­ one arm was reclined on a plough, the other grasped a spear—­and her feet were supported by a globe, and environed by mutilated emblems of seodality. [It is not possible to explain this costume as appropriate.]