From another point of view, too, the Pastoral is noteworthy and gratifying. It markedly discountenances that pessimism which for some thirty years past has characterized Papal documents, and which gave occasion to the observation that Pius IX. and his predecessor whine whenever they talk Latin. Occurrences in Italy, Spain, and Germany, and the history of the Austrian Concordat, with many other things, have led most of the clerical organs to take a gloomy view of the state of the world; and we frequently find them maintaining that a universal overthrow of the whole order of society in the Christian world, a universal deluge, is inevitable, but that the ship of the Church, the one asylum of safety, will float, like the ark, upon the waves, and then will begin a new order of things, and new period of history corresponding to the ultramontane ideal. In sharp antithesis to these gloomy pictures and predictions, the Bishops declare, _first_, that throughout the world the kingdom of God increases with fresh vigour, and brings forth fruit; _secondly_, that all attacks on the Church, and sufferings brought upon her, work for her good; and _thirdly_, that religious and ecclesiastical life is strengthened. Such a view as this is better calculated to arouse and sustain attachment to the Church and confidence in her indestructible powers of life and providential guidance than the opposite view, which exhibits to Catholics everywhere nothing but the humiliation of their Church and the triumph of her enemies. THE BISHOPS AND THE COUNCIL. (ALLG. ZEIT., NOV. 19 AND 20, 1869.) As the moment for the opening of the Council approaches, the excitement and disquiet, not only of Catholics but of all who concern themselves with the movements of the day, increases in view of so important an event. For the notion that the Council is merely an internal affair of the Catholic Church, and that its decrees will be confined to the sphere of the religious conscience, will be accepted by nobody who has heard of the projects entertained by the _Curia_, and who is not ignorant of the close connection of the Church with the culture of modern life, and the powerful position this gives her in the State and in the social order generally.