atives of the
people often presided as the high priests of these rites; and their
official dispatches to the convention, in which these ceremonies were
minutely described, were always heard with bursts of applause, and
sanctioned by decrees of insertion in the bulletin.*

* A kind of official newspaper distributed periodically at the
expence of Government in large towns, and pasted up in public
places--it contained such news as the convention chose to impart,
which was given with the exact measure of truth or falsehood that
suited the purpose of the day.

I have now conducted you to the period in which I am contemplating France
in possession of all the advantages which a total dereliction of
religious establishments can bestow--at that consummation to which the
labours of modern philosophers have so long tended.

Ye Shaftesburys, Bolingbrokes, Voltaires, and must I add the name of
Gibbon,* behold yourselves inscribed on the registers of fame with a
Laplanche, a Chenier, an Andre Dumont, or a Fouche!**--

* The elegant satirist of Christianity will smile at the presumption
of so humble a censurer.--It is certain, the misapplication only of
such splendid talents could embolden me to mention the name of the
possessor with diminished respect.

** These are names too contemptible for notice, but for the mischief
to which they were instrumental--they were among the first and most
remarkable persecutors of religion.

Do not blush at the association; your views have been the same; and the
subtle underminer of man's best comfort in the principles of his
religion, is even more criminal than him who prohibits the external
exercise of it. Ridicule of the sacred writings is more dangerous than
burning them, and a sneer at the miracles of the gospel more mischievous
than disfiguring the statues of the evangelists; and it must be confessed
that these Anti-christian Iconoclasts themselves might probably have been
content to "believe and say their prayers," had not the intolerance of
philosophy made them atheists and persecutors.--The coarse legend of
"death is the sleep of eternity,"* is only a compendium of the fine-drawn
theories of the more elaborate materialist, and the depositaries of the
dead will not corrupt more by the exhibition of this desolating standard,
than the libraries of the living by the volumes which hold out the same
oblivion to vice, and discouragem