in his face: "Here! Look at your Aldrovandi,
your man of God, that you tell me is incapable of intriguing in order to
become His vicar! Here he is making promises to seduce me into violating
my conscience."--"Alas! alas! It is too true! Clearly the Holy Ghost
will none of him. Speak to us of him no more!" So Aldrovandi's chance
was gone, and Albani found the means of uniting the necessary number of
voices on Lambertini, a good-enough sort of man, by all accounts, but
hardly of the wood from which popes are or should be made. He became
that Benedict XIV. who was Voltaire's correspondent, and who, as the
story goes, when he was asked by a young Roman patrician to make him a
list of the books he would recommend for his studies, replied, "My dear
boy, we always keep a list of the best books ready made. It is called
the _Index Expurgatorius_!"

Such were the doings of conclaves, and such the popes which resulted
from them, in that eighteenth century whose boasted philosophy pretty
well culminated in the conviction that pudding was good and sugar sweet.
Such will not be the conclave which will assemble at the death of the
present pontiff. The election will doubtless be scrupulously canonical
on all points; and, though it may be doubted how far the deliberations
of the Sacred College will be calculated to advance the truly understood
spiritual interests of humanity, there is, I think, little doubt that
they will be directed, according to the lights of the members, to the
choice of that individual who shall in their opinion be most likely to
advance the interests of the Church "A.D.M.G."

T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE.

MONSOOR PACHA.

Monsoor Pacha, it is pleasant to meet
Here, in the heart of this treacherous town--
Where faith is a peril and courtship a cheat,
More false to the touch than a rose overblown--
With a soul that is true to itself, as your own.

Monsoor Pacha, as two gentlemen may,
Civilized, city-bred, link we our hands:
Now from the town to the desert away!
Ours is a friendship whose spirit demands
The scope of the sky and the stretch of the sands.

Monsoor Pacha, doff your courtier's garb;
We have given to courtesy all of its dues;
Spring to your throne on the back of your barb,
Shake to the breezes your regal burnous,
Wave your lance-sceptre wherever you choose!

Monsoor, my chief! ah, I know you at len