them a rather less cold reception on their return to their dioceses. Meanwhile the eyes and the hopes of all educated Catholics, not only in Germany but in Italy, France and North America, are fixed on the chosen band of 300 Bishops. But how are matters likely to proceed? The Opposition is tough and tenacious. Every new _Schema_ bears so unmistakeably the impress of the interests of either the Jesuits or the _Curia_, that the Bishops cannot help growing constantly more cautious, suspicious and reserved. And to make their designs still clearer, the Jesuits supply the practical commentary in their official journal, the _Civiltà_, to the effect that no measures of the Governments against the encroachments of the Church on the civil jurisdiction, or her summons to transgress the laws of the country, would bind the consciences of their subjects. The subjoined anathema against every one who refuses to acknowledge that laws are annulled by the ordinances of the Church (_i.e._, the Pope), is a sorry consolation for the Bishops; for experience has shown too often that courts of justice and statesmen don’t trouble themselves about the excommunications incurred in the discharge of their official duties. The Bishops accordingly foresee nothing but endless rubs and collisions with the civil power, as well as with whole classes of the population at home; and when the Jesuits are commended to them as pledged and triumphant allies in the contest to be waged against Governments, constitutions and laws, they generally shake their heads suspiciously and with no particular feeling of triumphant joy. The Pope’s 300 episcopal foster-sons cost him 25,000 francs daily, and that makes the pleasant little sum of 1,500,000 francs for two sterile months, during which these doughty warriors have sat a good deal, but accomplished nothing by their sitting; for the old Roman proverb, “Romanus vincit sedendo,” has not been verified here. The Pope is gradually getting frightened at this daily expenditure, and, after the fashion of great lords, who readily lay the blame of the failure of their own plans on the bad advice of their subjects, he said to-day, in an outbreak of disgust, “per furia di farmi infallibile, mi faranno fallire.”