_Rome, Dec. 19, 1869._—Since I have been here, breathing physically and morally the air of Rome, and have heard some of the most prominent Infallibilists, I can understand a good deal which was an enigma to me when in Germany. The leading spirits of this party believe in the advent of a new spiritual dispensation, a period of the Holy Ghost, which is to depend on the turning-point of this definition of Papal Infallibility. Archbishop Manning declared some years ago, in a speech received with enthusiastic applause by the Roman dignitaries, “La Chiesa Cattolica di oggidí esce tutta nuova del fianco del Vicario di Gesù Cristo.” This reference to the formation of the woman from Adam’s rib is very suggestive, for Eve, by the Divine ordinance, was to be subject to the man,—and it includes the notion which I have met with in several quarters here, that the proclamation of the new dogma will be immediately followed by an outpouring of the Holy Ghost, and a renewal of the Pentecostal miracle. There will of course be this difference, that henceforth the Bishops will no longer speak with tongues, like the apostles and disciples on the day of Pentecost, but only with the tongue of the Infallible Pope, and will utter in this way the thoughts and words of the Holy Ghost. Hence not the slightest effect is produced when any one, say a German or Englishman, points to the terrible intellectual stumbling-block that will thereby be obtruded on the faithful, and the perplexity and inward alienation of so many thousands, and those too the higher and leading minds, which may be certainly foreseen. The gain will far exceed the loss; numberless Protestants and schismatics, attracted by the powerful magnet of Papal Infallibility, and the power of the Holy Ghost, hidden in Papal utterances, will stream into the Church—that is the sort of vision hovering before these men. And a man who believes in an age of the Holy Ghost cares nothing for what is said of the breach with the views and traditions of the ancient Church involved in the new article of faith: he thinks it quite in order that a new dogma should inaugurate a new era. Compared with such fanaticism, the speech of another Infallibilist leader, a Frenchman, at a public dinner, sounds sober, though in its way it is no less extravagant, when he assures us that the great connoisseur and discoverer of subterranean Rome, the Cavaliere de Rossi, has detected Papal Infallibility in the Catacombs, and whoever wants to see and appreciate it there, has only to descend into them.