These and the like thoughts are now occurring to many. The advice of the French Government, which would on all accounts gladly welcome an adjournment, the admonitions of Austria, which has at last, at the twelfth hour, receded from its attitude of coldness and indifference, and the knowledge that the two Protestant powers, Prussia and England, maintain the same views on the threatened decrees and intended ecclesiastical conquests, though without making any direct representations on the subject—all this more or less contributes to the gravity of the crisis. There are some drops of wormwood mingled with the joyous goblets quaffed daily to the Pope by the majority of 500 obsequious and courtly Latins. As the obedience of these Bishops and the Vicars-Apostolic, who can at any moment be deposed by Propaganda, is unlimited, they will vote the _Schemata_ exactly as the Pope desires; but most of them do it at least with an inward repugnance, and say, like the Aragonese Cortes of old, “We obey, but we don’t execute.” TWENTY-FOURTH LETTER. _Rome, Feb. 20, 1870._—The following classification of the French Bishops here according to their parties may be interesting. The French themselves distinguish three factions, Liberal, Ultramontane, and the Third Party—_i.e._, those who have signed no address, and have openly refused to do so. To the Liberal section belong Alby, Gaz, Marseilles, Nizza, Cahors, Mende, Perpignan, Bayonne, Montpellier, Valence, Viviers, La Rochelle, Luçon, Besançon, Metz, Nancy, Verdun, Annecy, Autun, Dijon, Grenoble, Paris, Orleans, Rheims, Chalons, S. Brieux, Vannes, Bayeux, Coutances, Evreux—thirty votes altogether. The Ultramontanes are—Rodez, Aire, Nîmes, Angoulême, Poictiers (in the superlative), Belley, St. Diez, Strasburg, Le Puy, Tulle, St. Jean de Maurienne, Langres, St. Claude, Blois, Chartres, Meaux, Versailles, Amiens, Beauvais, Rennes (a malcontent Ultramontane), Seez, Moulins, Toulouse, Carcassonne, Montauban, Laval and Le Mans—twenty-seven votes. In the Third Party, headed by the Cardinal-Archbishop of Rouen, are included Périgueus, Bourges, Tarantaise, Cambray, Arras, Nevers, Troyes, Pamiers, Tours—ten votes. The Bishops of Digne, Fréjus, Toulon and Soissons are described as doubtful.