or more audacious. It was a motley crowd. On the inside was a representation of the ImThe Holy Mother Church, knows no aristoc-maculate Conception, with another inscription racy but her own. Rich and poor meet to- to him "who alone has destroyed all heresies.' gether on a common level before her altar. A At the other end of the council hall, on a maggallery in the council chamber had been pre- nificent throne, flanked by the seats of the carpared for crowned heads. The beautiful Queen dinals, was the seat of the successor of the fishof Würtemberg, the Empress of Austria, the erman saint of the Sea of Galilee. Behind and ex-Queen of Naples, and the Grand Duke and over his throne a large painting hung, repreGrand Duchess of Tuscany were among its oc-senting the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecupants. A second gallery afforded accom- cost. Other paintings, of the Apostolic Council modation for the various embassadors to the Court of Rome. The remainder of the vast assembly depended on luck, skill, strength, or a well-administered bribe for the privilege of witnessing the august ceremonies of inauguration, or the more doubtful privilege of hearing little and seeing less, but of subsequently being able to say, "I was at the opening of the Ecumenical Council." Priest and layman, noble and peasant, men and women of all nationalities, faiths, and races, met in a common assemblage. Here, grouped together, was a company of barefooted and barelegged friars, whose rubicund visages testified to their good living, and whose muscular limbs witnessed to their vigorous health. A little apart from these a band of monks was gathered, clad from head to foot in solemn black, motionless as statues, their bright, sharp eyes shining through the orifices cut in the black hoods which completely enveloped their heads. Side by side stood the jeweled dame and the beggar woman in her tattered rags. Within a square yard, in the buzz of voices, you might hear French, English, German, Spanish, Italian, and Armenian. Devout spectators were reminded of the feast of Pentecost; scoffers, of the Tower of Babel. The council chamber had been fitted up for the Council in the north transept of the great Cathedral of St. Peter's. This room itself would make a magnificent church. It is two hundred feet in length, a hundred wide, and a hundred and fifty high. It would be difficult to find a room of tolerable size in the civilized world less adapted to discussion. It would be impossible to find one better adapted to scenic display. No pains or expense had been spared in rendering the allotted portion of the great cathedral worthy of the august assemblage which was to occupy it. Enough was spent in furniture and decoration to erect a magnificent temple. The expense was estimated at not far from $120,000 in gold. A high tapestried partition separated the "holy of holies" from the outer courts. Great doors in the centre were provided, which, being thrown open, would afford the public a view of the fathers in council during their occasional public sessions. Above the entrance on the outer side was a striking representation of Christ throned in glory, the open Gospels in one hand, the other raised in the act of benediction. On the doors were inscribed, in Latin, his last words, "Go ye and teach all nations; and behold I am with you all days even to the end of the world." at Jerusalem, of the councils of Nice, Ephesus, and Trent, of the chief doctors of the church, and of the popes who have presided at General Councils, served to remind the holy fathers that in all their work they were surrounded by a cloud of heavenly as well as by a throng of earthly witnesses. Between the entrance doors and the papal throne stood the altar and the pulpit, the latter upon wheels; while rising on either side, tier above tier, were the seats of the bishops, looking down upon the lowlier places, just in front of them, assigned to the shorthand reporters and various other subordinate officials of the Council. The floor was covered with a magnificent carpet, a royal present from the King of Prussia; and the architectural splendor of a hall which the art treasures of Italy combine to render without an equal in the world was enhanced by the antique tapestries, and splendid crimson and scarlet and green drapings which covered the seats prepared for the ecclesiastics. The opening had been fixed for half past eight o'clock in the morning, but it was half past nine before the booming of a cannon announced the approach of the ecclesiastical procession. The hum of the vast audience is hushed. A solemn expectancy pervades the whole assembly. The least devout catch for the moment the spirit of the great congregation, and feel that subtle influence which so magically charms the imagination and sways the heart, without affecting the judgment. A solemn chant, Veni Creator, is heard rising and falling in sweet cadences from a concealed choir. The holy procession has entered the precincts of the church. It advances up the aisle between the long ranks of soldiers who keep back the hushed and breathless throng. The chaplains and chamberlains and other subordinate officials lead the way. The abbes and bishops and archbishops follow; then, in the order of their rank, the primates and patriarchs and cardinals. These precede the holy father, who is borne in a chair of state, like that in which ediles and senators were borne during the Roman republic. A golden crucifix is carried before him, the gift of the Marquis of Bute, who is the original, if report be true, of Disraeli's "Lothair." Prelates, prothonotaries, generals of orders, and subordinate officials bring up the rear. Each official stops for a moment to kneel in reverence before the high altar where the sacrament is exposed. From the pope down to the stenographers this act of worship is observed by all. It is doubtful whether the world has ever witnessed an array of more splendid vestments. "Neither the Queen of Sheba," says a lady correspondent, "nor Solomon in all his glory' was ever arrayed like one of these. There were trailing robes of creamy satin, rich with gold embroidery; stoles gleaming with precious stones; hoods, capes, palliums, all of brilliant lustre, or of lace delicate as the web of the gossamer; and palliums and jupes of yellow satin, bordered with ermine, and of silver tissue, whereon the daintiest flowers of spring sparkled. The dress of the Eastern bishops was VOL. XLII.-No. 247.-2 singularly rich-of Tyrian purple, wrought with gold and precious stones; while in their turbans the diamonds, catching the light of many candles, flashed and sparkled like shivers of the rainbow. Then the cardinals, in their bright scarlet palliums fringed with gold-their capes and hoods all of the same brilliant hue-formed, indeed, a beautiful contrast in this magnificent pageant." Last of all, chiefest of all, was the holy father, his dress "entirely of white and gold; the jupe of heavy satin, wrought to the knees with wreaths of roses done in gold; pallium, stole, cape, all of white satin, and gleam ing at the breast with diamonds and other jew- | without like a living picture "more like some els; and his mitre, of cloth of gold, upon his half-dimmed illumination in an old painted head." And yet it was not the magnificent display of brilliant hues, of crimson and scarlet, of yellow and purple, of gold and silver and precious stones, which for the moment affected the most skeptical with a certain sense of awe. These seven hundred prelates represented nearly two hundred millions of believers; represented, too, a church sacred for the sake of its past history, if not for its present service to mankind. They came out of every land, and spoke in almost every known tongue. Coptic, Persian, Greek, Syriac, Spanish, Portuguese, Hungarian, German, French, Norwegian, Italian, English, were all represented in this assemblage. Men were here who held princely estates in France and Germany, and men who came from far-off mission stations, and who, in vows of poverty, voluntarily taken, had consecrated their all to the mother church; men who walked before kings, their equal in wealth, their superior in position and authority, and men from the democracy of America, the spiritual rulers but the political equals of their congregations; men learned in all the lore of the church, learned in the ancient languages and in the modern sciences, and men who knew only their mother-tongue, and hardly that accurately; men ripe with all the culture of Europe, and men educated amidst the ruder but simpler civilization of Armenia and Nestoria; men who were born to rule, and men who were born to obsequious submission; men with faces obese, stupid, meaningless-not many such; men with faces whose sharp eyes and astute expression spoke their cunning; men open-eyed and large-browed, royal in intellectual strength; men of ingenuous countenance, the motto of whose life was unmistakably written in their faces-" speaking the truth in love;" men-a few-the fire of whose youth still gleamed in the undimmed lustre of their eyes, and gave elasticity to their vigorous step; men, for the most part, whose age approximated infirmity, and whose silvery locks were their chiefest ornament. Some were over eighty; many had passed seventy; there were but few under sixty. Such are the impressions which this costly and magnificent pageantry produced on the minds of the spectators. No other potentate in christendom could have assembled such a body. No other potentate could have provided them with so magnificent a reception. Scenic effects are a study in Rome. Art in the Holy City is still subordinate to the church, but it is high art no longer. It has buried in the tomb of the past the glories of Raphael and Michael Angelo; it has substituted that of the decorator and the posturer. But in decoration and posturing it is nearly infallible. The inauguration of the Ecumenical Council was, in truth, a grand and successful religious tableau. The open portal in the tapestried partition served the purpose of a magnificent frame. The Council itself seemed to the spectators missal than reality. The obscure daylight and curious atmosphere, created by the wax-light, added to the illusion." The music, now a single voice, that of the pope, strong in age, though tremulous, chanting in mellifluous tones, now a great chorus of seven hundred voices swelling the response, and now the great congregation of ninety thousand joining in the deep Amen, rendered the grandest scenic service of the century, also the grandest in its musical effects. And when, one after another, priest, bishop, archbishop, primate, patriarch, and cardinal, approaching in turn, kneeled before the vicegerent of God to kiss his foot, his knee, or his hand, and receive his benediction, something more than the mere æsthetic effect of their glittering robes moving to and fro was visible, or rather, let us say, was felt. A sympathetic sentiment of reverence, amounting almost to adoration, thrilled the spectators-an emotion which it needed the clear light of day and the bustle of busy life without to dissipate, even from the hearts of those who had least faith in hero-worship, and least inclination to make Pius IX. their hero, if to hero-worship they had been ever so much inclined. Yet beneath all this grand display were hidden the germs of bitter controversies, yet to grow, perhaps, into world-wide conflicts. From the day of the organization of the Jesuit order obedience has been its avowed watch-word. Its founder, a chivalric son of Spain, and by inheritance and native passion a natural member of its military order, carried into the religious society which he instituted the same despotic sway which makes every private soldier a machine, and the same chivalric devotion to his new mistress, the church, which incited the chivalry of his native land always to resent with relentless indignation any slight cast upon their chosen queens. For over three centuries the order which he estab lished has been striving to secure the absolute supremacy in the Roman Catholic Church. In its crusades, not only against the liberties of mankind, but against those of the church it has professed to serve, it has met with varying success. At one time almost absolute master of Europe, it so abused the power it possessed that it was successively cast out of almost every European state by royal or legislative decree; until, finally, near the close of the last century, it was abolished altogether by the bull of Clement XIV. Such an institution is not, however, easily destroyed. In its misery it won upon the sympathies even of those who had least regard for its principles and methods. In less than half a century from the decree of the infallible pope who abolished the order another infallible pope reinstated it. From that day to this the spirit of Loyola has been striving to recover its lost position. The battle has been a hard one. Its history, even the decrees of the pope it professed to re vere, have been against it. If Loyola had | own government subject to the behests of Rome followers, so had Paschal; and, truth to tell, were called Ultramontanes, because their allethe age, even in the Roman Catholic Church, giance was beyond the mountains. Their opwas more prolific of Paschals than of Loyolas. ponents, never until now crystallized into one France refused to bow its neck to the yoke of party, have been known by the names of their bondage; so did Germany; so did much of respective nationalities, as Anglican or Gallican Roman Catholic England and America; so, for or German Catholics, or sometimes by the more the most part, did the Roman Catholic Church general term of "liberals." in the Orient; so even did a minority in emancipated Spain, and emancipated Italy; so, for a while, did the pope himself. Its first step in regaining its ancient prestige and power was to secure the pope. This has been done. Pius IX., who commenced his official career as a liberal, and whose charitable nature and sympathies would still incline him to the side of liberalism, did not a religious self-conceit, persistently and for a purpose fostered till it has become a fanaticism, drown their voice, has become the obedient instrument of the order which he fondly imagines he controls. The second step was to secure a decree from an Ecumenical Council declaring, as a new dogma, to which all the faithful shall henceforth assent, the personal infallibility of the pope of Rome. The spirit of Loyola found the spirit of the age too strong for it. It could not directly control the church, but it could rule the pope. It only remained to make the pope ruler of the church. The ambition of Jesuitism was the first element, the dominant element in the Ecumenical Council; the second was the ambition of Italy. Since the days of the Cæsars Italy has not lost her ambition to be mistress of the world. The position which the arms of the Goths and the Vandals wrested from her she recovered by cunning. Brute force proved no match for astuteness; and, till the Reformation, every government was, with occasional exceptions, the obedient vassal of the Bishop of Rome. But astuteness proved no match for the growing intelligence of mankind. The church itself felt the effect of a reformation which was really a revolution; and in France, in Hungary, in Germany, in England, and even finally in Spain, there were an increasing number of Catholic divines, whose orthodox fidelity no one dared dispute, but who no longer bowed the knee before the Italian idol, or offered up incense at the Italian altar. They believed in the Holy Catholie Church, but not in the Church of Rome; in the Holy Catholic Church, but in a church in which the Frenchman, German, Hungarian, and Anglican were the brethren, not the servants of the Italian. Thus there grew up simultaneously a double rebellion in the church-a rebellion by the emancipated intellect against the Jesuitical supremacy, a rebellion by genuine piety and its twin-brother patriotism against Italian control. Concerning the first the governments of Europe were supremely indifferent. There was not a government in Europe which was not glad to foster the second. Those prelates who, living in Northern Europe, held their duty to their These were the two parties who, on the 8th day of December, 1869, gathering beneath the dome of St. Peter's Cathedral, appeared to unite their hearts and voices in devout responses, and vied with each other in the seeming reverence which they paid to the supreme pontiff, whom the one party purposed to use, and whom the other party purposed to defeat. These parties were far from evenly divided. If the Ecumenical Council had been a representative assembly it is scarcely doubtful that the liberal, or at least the anti-Italian party, would have had a considerable majority. But the Holy Mother Church does not preserve the reality of republicanism even when she appears to employ its forms. A bishop is a bishop whether he represents a diocese containing a million souls or one containing a thousand, or whether he represents none at all. It is clear that to leave all unbelievers without a shepherd would be inconsistent with that charity which has always characterized the founders of the Inquisition and the preachers of the gospel according to St. Bartholomew. His holiness the pope is pleased, therefore, to appoint a certain considerable number of bishops, in partibus infidelium, who, for the most part, reside in the city of Rome, probably for the reason that there are no unbelievers there. Thus the Papal States, with a Roman Catholic population of threequarters of a million, had one hundred and forty-three votes in the Council (which, in the aggregate, numbered seven hundred and sixtyfour delegates), a representation three times that which belonged to all Austria, with a Roman Catholic population of twenty-two millions, and nearly twice that of France, with a Roman Catholic population of thirty-eight millions. Italy is almost wholly ultramontane. Italy, with a population of twenty-seven millions, was represented by two hundred and seventy-six votes, while France and Germany combined, with a Roman Catholic population nearly if not quite double that of Italy, had considerably less than half its number of representatives.* American bishops are, with a comparatively few exceptions, ultramontane. The American Catholics, eight millions in number, were supposed to enjoy so much more of God's special favor than the twenty-two millions of |