Lamartine desired of his age that Italy should produce “des hommes et non de la poussière humaine.” For three months have these 750 prelates been assembled—in theory the very flower of the Catholic world, the pastors of 180 million souls, men with a rich experience at their back. They were at once separated into two parties, one of 600 and the other of about 150. On which side are the men and on which the human dust? What have these 600 done in the three months they have been together, what have they brought to an issue, and what thoughts or sparks of intelligence have been struck out of this daily contact with so many high dignitaries from the four quarters of the world? Their utter sterility, aimlessness and poverty of thought—their passively resigning themselves to a mere assent to the thoughts and words of others—all this, when watched close at hand, makes a painful impression. It is true that European history since 1789 has accustomed us to the infirmities and follies and the unproductiveness of great deliberative assemblies; it has become an every-day phenomenon, and in our days one’s expectations from an ecclesiastical assembly can only be of the most moderate kind. There is no fear there of rash and hasty decisions or revolutionary measures. But La Bruyere’s saying, “A great assembly always becomes a rabble,” is verified even at Rome, and the Italians of 1870 have already begun to emulate the example of their ancestors in 1562. Just as the majority at Trent knew how to reduce a disagreeable speaker to silence by wild cries and coughing and scraping with their feet, so is it now at the Vatican Council. It is the humiliating feeling of intellectual impotence and of deficiency alike in knowledge, eloquence and mind, as compared with the minority, from whom almost everything emanates that can be called life or thought in the Council. They feel their abject littleness, in their thankless rôle of being a mere echo of the _Schemata_ and Canons proposed, and having to present in so unadorned and undisguised a form that “sacrificio dell’ intelletto” which the Jesuits so eagerly commend. The honour of being afterwards lauded, as one of the 600 organs of the Holy Ghost at this Council, has to be purchased rather dear. But we cannot in fact come to close quarters and converse with these Bishops of the majority, without being reminded of the reply of a Dane to a Frenchman, who said to him (before the Revolution) that the highest Order in France was that of the Holy Ghost. “Notre Saint Esprit est un éléphant,” answered the Dane. But the situation is almost too serious for such thoughts.