If at the end of the first month we take a view of the situation, it is clear that the word “Council” requires to be taken in a very wide and general sense to include this assembly. It cannot be compared with the ancient Councils in the first thousand years of Church history, before the separation of East and West, for there are no points of contact. In the first place, the whole lay world, all sovereigns and their ambassadors, are entirely excluded from the Synod, which has never happened from the Council of Nice downwards. That was, of course, necessary, for even at Trent the French ambassador announced, on entering the Council, that his King had sent him to watch over the freedom of the Bishops; and certainly the ambassadors of Catholic Powers would have protested against the present arrangements and order of business, which give much less security than even at Trent. Here the Bishops are in a sense the Pope’s prisoners. Without his permission they cannot leave the Council, they are forbidden to meet together for common deliberation, are not allowed to print anything till it has passed the censorship, or to bring forward any motion without the Pope’s approval. It is the Pope who makes the decrees and defines the dogmas; the Council has simply to assent. Two rights only are left to the Bishops; they can make speeches in the General Congregation, and they can say _Placet_ or _Non placet_. There is a quite luxurious abundance of means of coercion, impediments and chains;—with the Pope’s 300 episcopal boarders, the 62 Bishops of the Roman States, the 68 Neapolitans, Sicilians, etc., all manœuvring with a precision a Prussian General could not wish to surpass on the reviewing-ground, the _Curia_ might have fairly hoped to gain its ends, even were a little more freedom allowed to the Opposition section of the Assembly.(35) TENTH LETTER. _Rome, Jan. 15, 1870._—On Sunday last the Pope gave audience to a great crowd of visitors,—some 700 or 1000, it is said,—at once, and took occasion to express before them his displeasure at the Opposition Bishops. He said there were some Prelates who lacked the temper of perfect faith, and hence arose difficulties, which however he, the Pope, should know how to overcome. In Church matters no attention was to be paid to the judgment of the world, as he himself despised it, for the Church’s kingdom is not of this world. It has hitherto of course been held in the Church that the judgment of the world—that is, of their flocks, who constitute their own immediate world—is exactly what the Bishops ought to attend to very much, and to avoid giving offence to them and perplexing their consciences in matters of religion.