It may be that before these lines meet the eye of the readers they are intended for the world will be once again witnessing that function of the Roman Catholic Church which of all others makes the highest pretensions to transcendental spiritual significance, and is in reality the most utterly and grossly mundane--a _conclave_. In any case, it cannot be long before that singular spectacle is enacted on the accustomed stage before the converging eyes of Christendom. In any case, too, it will be nearly thirty years since the world has seen the like. And never before since St. Peter sat (or did not sit) in the seat of the Roman bishops has so long a period elapsed unmarked by the election of a supreme pontiff. The coming conclave will be held under circumstances essentially dissimilar from those surrounding all its predecessors, as will be readily understood if we consider the difference which recent changes, both lay and ecclesiastical, have made in the position of the pope. If, on the one hand, the political changes in Europe have taken from the cardinals the power of creating a sovereign prince, the ecclesiastical changes which the late ecumenical council has wrought in the constitution of the Church have placed in their hands the power and duty of selecting a supreme ruler of the Church with acknowledged claims to a loftier and more tremendous authority than the most high-handed of his predecessors has hitherto claimed. And the nature of this authority is such that the political rulers of the world may well feel--and are, as we know, feeling--a more anxious interest in the result of the election than they have for many a generation felt in the elevation of a temporal ruler of the ci-devant States of the Church. Under these circumstances it may be acceptable to our readers to have some brief account of what conclaves are and have been. That this method of choosing a supreme head of the universal Church was in its origin abusive--that the earliest popes were chosen by the suffrages of the entire body of the faithful, that by a process of encroachment this election was in the course of time arrogated to themselves by the Roman clergy, and was ultimately, by a further process of similar encroachment, monopolized by the "Sacred College" of cardinals,--all this is sufficiently well known. It is, however, curious enough to merit a passing word, that a precisely analogous process of progressive encroachment may be observed to have taken place in the mode of appointing the bishops of the Church, not only in the Catholic, but also in the Protestant branch of it. First freely elected by the body of the faithful, they were subsequently chosen by the clergy, and lastly by a small and select body of these in the form of a "chapter." Only in this case a further step of encroachment being still possible, that step has been made; and bishops are nominated in the Catholic Church formally, and in the Anglican really, by the pope and the sovereign respectively.