It was well that in that dreary, chaotic period there was a brave and bold speaker who did not entirely despair of humanity, even when he and his companions had broken adrift from their anchorage in the rotten and worn-out systems of Protestant theology. The grace of the faith has thus far escaped the Concord philosopher, but who shall speak of the ways of God? The theologian will solve you quickly all questions in his noble science, except questions upon the tract of grace. There he hesitates, for the most intimate and personal communications of God with the soul take place in the mystery of grace. Every man has his own _tractatus de gratia_ written upon his own heart in the all-beautiful handwriting of God, sealing us, as St. Paul says, and writing upon us the mark that distinguishes us as his beloved. It is the miserable consequence of the New England system of early education, which inheres in a man’s very spirit, that it perversely misrepresents the Catholic Church. It is simply astounding how little Americans know about our divine faith. They have never deemed it worth their while to examine it, taking it for granted that all that is said against it is true. We remember, as a boy, reading Peter Parley’s histories, which were very popular in New England, and not a page was free from some misrepresentation of the church. Emerson classes “Romanism” with a half-dozen absurd theories; which goes to show that he has not even reached that point of culture which, according to its advocates, understands and embraces all the great creeds of humanity, in their best and most universal truth. Mr. Emerson is now in the sere and yellow leaf, and it is to be feared that his intellectual pride, and that nauseating flattery which weak-minded people assiduously pay to men of great intellectual attainments, have left in him a habit of vanity which is fatal to truth. We have known very able men who were prevented from seeing the truth of Catholicity by the dense clouds of incense that their admirers continually wafted before their shrines. The fulness of divine faith which he lacks, and for which he seems mournfully to cry out, is in the happy possession of the humblest child of the Catholic religion; not, as he would think, merely instinctive or the result of education, but living and logical, the gift and grace of the Holy Ghost. Emerson is no theologian, though once a Protestant minister, which fact, however, would not argue much for his theology. But he has a heroic and poetic mind whose native strength manifests itself even in the very eccentric orbit through which it passes. PAPAL ELECTIONS. III. In view of the sad affliction which has so recently befallen the church in the demise of Pope Pius IX.—now of happy memory—we shall preface this article on papal elections with a brief account of the ceremonies that follow upon the death of a Sovereign Pontiff.