For the fourth or fifth time since the opening of the Council, the ultramontane correspondents have been instructed to say, that the acoustic defects of the Hall have been remedied through new arrangements. This is not true; the speeches are never understood in many parts of the Chamber, not even where the secretaries sit. Meanwhile the Pope has conceived a desire to appear again in the midst of the Bishops and hold a Solemn Session. Hitherto he has been invisible and generally unapproachable to his “venerable brethren,” as he officially styles them. The last time the assembly saw him was at the unsuccessful Solemn Session of January 6, when the Bishops had to go through the useless ceremony of swearing oaths, in order to fill up the vacant time. For Pius does not feel that there is the slightest need for ascertaining the views of the Bishops about the measures in hand, or their wishes and proposals, and hearing their report of the state of Church matters in their own countries. He stands too high for that. A French prelate remarked lately that the Council does not thrive, because the Pope stands at once too near it and too far from it—so near that he robs it of all freedom, so far that there is no community of feeling and views and understanding. There has never indeed been a period in Church history where it has been made so palpably plain to the Episcopate how much the name of “brother,” which the Pontifex gives to every Bishop, is worth, and how immeasurable is the gulf between the “brother” on the Roman throne, the Pope-King, and the brother in Paris or Vienna or Prague.