It may have been merely a coincidence. But there can be no doubt that grandeur was added to a scene, in itself sufficiently imposing, when, as on Sinai of old, lightning flashed and thunder pealed, as the Fathers of the Council solemnly rose to give their final vote. “The _placets_ of the Fathers,” writes the correspondent of the London _Times_ (Aug. 5, 1870), “struggled through the storm while the thunder pealed above, and the lightning flashed in at every window, and down through the dome and every smaller cupola. ‘_Placet!_’ shouted his Eminence or his Grace, and a loud clap of thunder followed in response, and then the lightning darted about the Baldacchino and every part of the church and council-hall, as if announcing the response. So it continued for nearly one hour and a half, during which time the roll was being called, and a more effective scene I never witnessed. Had all the decorators and all the getters-up of ceremonies in Rome been employed, nothing approaching to the solemn grandeur of the storm could have been prepared, and never will those who saw it and felt it forget the promulgation of the first dogma of the church.” Less friendly critics beheld, in this magnificent thunder-storm, a distinct voice of Divine anger, condemning the important act of the assembled Fathers. Had they forgotten Sinai and the Ten Commandments? All of a sudden, as the last words were uttered, the tempest ceased; and, at the moment when Pius IX. intoned the _Te Deum_, a sun-ray lighted up his noble and expressive countenance. The voices of the Sixtine choristers, who continued chanting the hymn, could not be heard. They were lost in the united concert of the venerable Fathers and the vast assemblage. COMPARATIVE IMPORTANCE OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL. In whatever light we view the Council of the Vatican—the œcumenical of the nineteenth century—it strikes us as being, in ecclesiastical annals, the event of the age. It also marks, in a remarkable manner, the character and progress of the time. The Council of Trent was highly important in its day; and still, after a lapse of three hundred years, its teachings govern the Church. Whilst, as regards the wisdom of its decisions, it cannot be excelled, it was surpassed in many things by the Council of the Vatican.