en dispread.
Here, where I nursed despair that morn,
The promise of fresh joy is born,
Arrayed in sober colors still,
But piercing the gray mould to fill
With vague sweet influence the air,
To lift the heart's dead weight of care,
Longings and golden dreams to bring
With joyous phantasies of spring.

EMMA LAZARUS.

WHAT IS A CONCLAVE?

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