The mysteries of Eleusis were celebrated every year at Eleusis, near Athens, in honor of Ceres, and were a regular "May Anniversary," so to speak, for the pious heathens of the period. It took just nine days to complete them; long enough for a puppy to get its eyes open. The candidates were very handsomely put through. On the first day, they got together; on the second, they took a wash in the sea; on the third, they had some ceremonies about Proserpine; on the fourth, no mortal knows what they did; on the fifth, they marched round a temple, two and two, with torches, like a Wide-Awake procession; on the sixth, seventh, and eighth, there were more processions, and the initiation proper, said to have been something like that of Free-masonry; so that we may suppose the victims rode the goat and were broiled on the gridiron. On the ninth day, the ceremony, they say, consisted in overturning two vessels of wine. I fear by this means that they all got drunk; and the more so, because the coins of Eleusis have a hog on one side, as much as to say, We make hogs of ourselves. There was a set of mysteries at Athens, called Thesmophoria, and one at Rome, called the mysteries of the Bona Dea, which were celebrated by married women only. Various notions prevailed as to what they did. But can there be any reasonable doubt about it? They were, I fear, systematic conspirators' meetings, in which the more experienced matrons instructed the junior ones how to manage their husbands. If this was not their object, then it was to maintain the influence of the heathen clergy over the heathen ladies. Women have always been the constituents of priests where false religions prevailed, as they have, for better purposes, of the ministers of the Gospel among Christians.