* 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.