These, or similar ceremonies, call them if you please absurdities, or call them impieties, (you will in neither case be far from their proper name,) were in the early ages of Christianity tolerated in almost every place. Mr. Douce has furnished us with some curious remarks upon them in the eleventh volume of the _Archaeologia_, and Mr. Ellis in his new edition of _Brand's Popular Antiquities_. I am indebted to the first of these gentlemen for the knowledge that the inclosed etching, copied some time ago from a drawing by Mr. Joseph Harding, is allusive to the ceremony of the _feast of fools_, and does not represent a group of morris-dancers, as I had erroneously supposed. Indeed, Mr. Douce believes that many of the strange carvings on the _misereres_ in our cathedrals have references to these practices. And yet, to the honor of England, they never appear to have been equally common with us as in France.--According to Du Cange[108], the confraternity of the Conards or Cornards was confined to Rouen and Evreux. I have not been able to ascertain when they were suppressed; but they certainly existed in the time of Taillepied, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, about fifty years previously to which they dropped their original name of _Coqueluchers_. At this time too they had evidently degenerated from the primary object of their institution, "ridendo castigare mores atque in omne quod turpitèr factum fuerat ridiculum immittere." Taillepied was an eye-witness of their practices; and he prudently contents himself with saying; "le fait est plus clair à le voir que je ne pourrois icy l'escrire."