“At _Marriage_ the bride and bridegroom were to be coupled with ribands, or garlands of flowers, the ends of which were to be held on each side by the elders of their respective families. The Bride received a ring from her husband, and a medal of union from the head of the family. There was a rite also for infants.... When a member _died_, the other members of the Society were invited to place a flower upon the urn, and pray the Creator to receive the deceased into his bosom. The Decades and National Holidays were observed by these Anti-Christians, and they had four Holidays of their own, for Socrates, St. Vincent de Paule, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Washington,—oddly assorted names! Two of them, however, stand well together in this kalendar, for the one, who was a Christian, established the Foundling Hospital at Paris; and the other, who was a sentimentalist, a philosopher, and a Theophilanthropist, sent his own children to it.... “LA RÉVEILLÈRE used to take praise to himself for having, in his Directorial character, humbled the Pope and the great Turk. The Anti-Christian language of the Directory, and its persecution of the Clergy, are imputed to him; so far his colleagues were willing to go with him; but his zeal for Deism they regarded as ridiculous.... In the way of pecuniary aid, he could obtain little:—_beaucoup d’argent_ was what the Directory were accustomed to demand, not to give.... “Their _Service_ at Paris was numerously attended while it was a new spectacle, and the subject of conversation; but more than two-thirds of the persons thus assembled were idlers. But this concourse soon abated; there was nothing attractive in the ceremonies, nothing to impose upon the imagination or the senses. A propagandist reported from Montreuil that the readings and orations had been heard by an audience _avide de morale_, but he had observed with pain that the _matériel_ of the worship was not what it should have been.... It was got up at Bourges in better style; the orator there officiated in a white sash ornamented with blue flowers, before an altar upon which an orange tree was placed: and at the _fête des époux_, the Theophilanthropists carried _two pigeons_ in procession, as an emblem of conjugal tenderness, and placed them upon the altar of the country!” * * * * *