This was obviously written for the eyes of the Pontiff, whose whole life is surrounded as with a rose-garland of miraculous deliverances, illuminations and divine inspirations. And thus the veil is now dropped, and the time come for speaking openly. Up to the end of last summer, and even till December, the answer given from Rome to all inquiries and anxieties of Bishops or Governments was, that there was no intention of bringing infallibility before the Council and that the _Civiltà_ was mistaken; the Court of Rome was not responsible for what an individual Jesuit might write. Antonelli gave the most quieting assurances on all sides. But meanwhile the Committee of Theologians employed in preparing the materials for the Council had already voted this new dogma, under direction of the highest authority, and Archbishop Cardoni had sent in his report upon it, which was received by all against the single vote of Alzog. The subjects to be brought before the Council were carefully concealed from the Bishops, and an oath of silence imposed on the theologians who were summoned, in order that they might come to Rome unprepared and without the necessary books, and might simply indorse the elaborations of the Jesuits as voting-machines in the prison-house of the Council. It is merely repeating what is notorious in Rome to say that Pius IX. is beneath comparison with any one of his predecessors for the last 350 years in theological knowledge and intellectual cultivation generally. One must go back to Innocent VIII. and Julius II. to find Popes of similar theological and scientific attainments. It is known here that, small as are the intellectual requisites for ordination in the Roman States, it was only out of special regard to his family that Giovanni Maria Mastai could get ordained priest. His subsequent career offered no opportunity or means for supplying this neglect, and thus he became Pope with the feeling of his entire deficiency in the necessary acquirements. This unpleasant consciousness naturally produced the idea that the defect would be remedied without effort on his part by enlightenment from above, and divine inspiration would supply the absence of human knowledge. This illusion has been and will be so common, that we need not have troubled ourselves about it, did it not threaten now to become a destructive firebrand. The public letters which have passed of late between the assembled Fathers on the absorbing question of the day deserve attention. They show the deep gulf which divides the members of the Episcopate. There is Spalding, Archbishop of Baltimore, who first wanted to help the Pope to get his infallibility acknowledged indirectly by his now famous _postulatum_, where the real point was kept in the background, when he proposed a decree that every papal decision was to be received with unconditional inward assent. But now, in his letter to Dupanloup, he has changed his mind, and wants infallibility to be openly and explicitly defined.