Among other excellencies the Festival we speak of possessed, it was performed but once a year, and only continued a few days: for, ceremonies of this kind ought to occur but seldom, and be only of short duration; and it was like a short time of _Saturnalia_, during which each Sex kindly exhibited to the sight of the other those personal charms and advantages which they wisely kept hidden during the rest of the whole year. In the second place, the real design of the whole transaction was pretty openly and candidly acknowledged: and if we except the few religious rites by which the ceremony was begun, which served to give dignity to it, and the notion of the power of the slaps of the _Luperci_ to render Women fruitful, which served to give importance to the whole solemnity, it was agreed fairly enough on all sides, that no more was meant than temporary pastime and amusement. In the third place, no cruelty whatever took place in the performance of the Festival we speak of, nor was it possible any should; and from the lightness and the breadth of the straps which the Luperci employed, we may judge of their tender anxiousness not to do, through zeal or other cause, any injury to the fair objects who made application to them. When one of the three bands of Luperci (out of which every Man who wanted an excellent shape or elegant address, was no doubt irremissibly blackballed) had been let loose out of the Temple of the God Pan, and after the coming of a Lupercus into any particular street had been announced by the flourishes of the haut-boys, the clarinets, the trumpets, kettle-drums, and other musical instruments that were stationed near the entrance of it (for we are absolutely to suppose that music contributed to embellish so charming a festival) some one of the amiable persons who proposed to receive benefit from the Lupercus’s services, moved out of the croud, and threw herself into his way. On sight of her, the whole fierceness of the Lupercus became softened. However kindled his spirits might have been by the religious rites by which the ceremony was begun, by the course he had just performed, and the sight of the multitude of spectators who lined the streets, whatever in short might be that state of fever in which Festus seems to represent him, the _februans_ Lupercus, at the sight of the lovely creature who obstructed his passage, felt his agitation succeeded by sensations of the most benevolent sort.