The French, who had banished religion from their thoughts, and from their system of domestic policy, yet usually preserved some perverted ceremony connected with it, on public solemnities. They had disused the exercises of devotion, and expressly disowned the existence of an object of worship; yet they could not do without altars, and hymns, and rites, upon such occasions as the present. The general, conducted by Barras, the president of the Directory, approached an erection, termed the Altar of the Country, where they went through various appropriate ceremonies, and at length dismissed a numerous assembly, much edified with what they had seen. The two Councils, or Representative Bodies, also gave a splendid banquet in honour of Buonaparte. And what he appeared to receive with more particular satisfaction than these marks of distinction, the Institute admitted him a member of its body[346] in the room of his friend Carnot, (who was actually a fugitive, and believed at the time to be dead,) while the poet Chenier promulgated his praises, and foretold his future triumphs, and his approaching conquest of England.[347] There is nothing less philosophical than to attach ridicule to the customs of other nations, merely because they differ from those of our own; yet it marks the difference between England and her continental neighbour, that the two Houses of Parliament never thought of giving a dinner to Marlborough, nor did the Royal Society choose his successor in the path of victory a member by acclamation; although the British nation in either case acquitted themselves of the debt of gratitude which they owed their illustrious generals, in the humbler and more vulgar mode of conferring on both large and princely domains. Meantime, the threat of invasion was maintained with unabated earnestness. But it made no impression on the British, or rather it stimulated men of all ranks to bury temporary and party dissensions about politics, and bend themselves, with the whole energy of their national character, to confront and resist the preparations made against them. Their determination was animated by recollections of their own traditional gallantry, which had so often inflicted the deepest wounds upon France, and was not now likely to give up to any thing short of the most dire necessity. The benefits were then seen of a free constitution, which permits the venom of party spirit to evaporate in open debate. Those who had differed on the question of peace or war, were unanimous in that of national defence, and resistance to the common enemy; and those who appeared in the vulgar eye engaged in unappeasable contention, were the most eager to unite themselves together for these purposes, as men employed in fencing would throw down the foils and draw their united swords, if disturbed by the approach of robbers.