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.] * The females who personated the new divinity were usually selected from amongst those who "might make sectaries of whom they bid but follow," but who were more conspicuous for beauty than any other celestial attribute.--The itinerant goddess of the principal towns in the department de la Somme was the mistress of one Taillefer, a republican General, brother to the Deputy of the same name.--I know not, in this military government, whether the General's services on the occasion were included in his other appointments. At Amiens, he not only provided the deity, but commanded the detachment that secured her a submissive adoration.