born at Bologna, of which see he was archbishop, of a noble and, I am told, very ancient, but not illustrious, family. His age is sixty-four or five. He is somewhat below the ordinary height, stout, and of a good strong constitution, with a round full face, a jovial air, and a genial kindly physiognomy. His character is open, good-humoured, and easy; his tone of mind gay and cheerful; his conversation agreeable; his tongue very free, and his talk often licentious; but his moral conduct and habitudes pure and perfectly regular. He managed his diocese of Bologna with infinite charity and to the edification of all. But it will be absolutely necessary that he should get rid of his habit of using phrases fitted rather for the guard-room than the Papal throne."

Sixteen Conclaves have taken place since that which elected Clement X. in 1670-a period which may be taken as marking the commencement in the Conclaves of Louis XIV. modes of thought and behaviour.

There were three more within the seventeenth century: 1st., that which elected the Odeschalchi, with whom the reader has made some acquaintance in the last Conclave, as Innocent XI., in 1676, who was not more than sixty-four when elected, and who governed the Church for nearly twelve years, with a more happy combination of the piety of a bishop with the wisdom of a good temporal ruler than any other Pontiff, at least in modern time, if not in the whole list of the Popes; 2nd., that which elected Ottoboni of Venice, as Alexander VIII., in 1689, who reigned little more than a year; and 3rd., that which elected Pignatelli of Naples,

as Innocent XII., in 1691, whose reign of little more than nine years completed the century. He died in 1700.

There were eight Conclaves in the eighteenth century, the last of the eighteenth century Popes again closing his reign with the close of the century. These were:1st. Albani of Urbino, elected as Clement IX. in 1700, who reigned a little more than twenty years.

2nd. Conti, a Roman, elected as Innocent XIII. in 1721, who reigned not quite three years.

3rd. Orsini, a Roman, elected as Benedict XIII. in 1724, who reigned nearly six years.

4th. Corsini, a Florentine, elected as Clement XII. in 1730, who reigned nine years and a half.

5th. Lambertini of Bologna, Voltaire's well-known correspondent, elected as Benedict XIV. in 1740, as we have seen, who reigned somewhat less than eighteen years.

6th. Rezzonico, a Venetian, elected as Clement XIII. in 1758, who reigned ten years and a half.

7th. Ganganelli, a Romagnolo, elected as Clement XIV. in 1769, who reigned five years and four months.

8th. Braschi, a Romagnolo, elected as Pius VI. in 1775, who reigned twenty-four years and eight months. In this nineteenth century there have been five Conclaves :

1st. That which elected Chiaramonti, a Romagnolo and a native of the same small town from which his predecessor Pius VI. had come (Cesena), as Pius VII., in 1800, who reigned nearly twenty-three years and a half.

2nd. Della Genga, born at the place of that name, the manor of his family, near Fabriano, in Umbria, elected as Leo XII. in 1823, who reigned five years and four months.

3rd. Saverio, born at Cingoli, elected as Pius VIII. in 1829, who reigned twenty months.

4th. Capellari of Belluno, elected as Gregory XVI. in 1831, who reigned over fifteen years.

5th. Mastai of Sinigallia, elected as Pius IX. in 1846, who has, up to this present time of writing, reigned over thirty years, the only Pope in all the two hundred and sixty-two occupants of the Holy See who has overpassed the quarter of a century, which is the traditional limit of the incumbency of St. Peter!

It is impossible, as I have said, and as the reader can very well see for himself, to attempt any account within the limits of this volume of these Conclaves. It may be said of them generally, that more and more they approached the nature of arrangements à l'aimable. If the passions of ambition, jealousy, greed, and the love of power were by no means extinguished, they were constrained by the decencies of modern manners to show themselves less openly, to moderate their violence, and to veil themselves beneath a courteous phraseology, and at least a theoretical devotion to the objects which ought to be those for which cardinals and Conclaves exist. The Popes become less and less high-handed and despotic. The cardinals, if they have still much to hope from the man they agree to set over them, have much less to fear from him, and less motive to be swayed by those considerations of saving themselves from enmities

and the consequences of old grudges which in the times we have been traversing played so large a part in the Conclaves. De Brosses, however, reports some words of the Camerlengo, Cardinal Albani, which may be cited on this point: "These gentlemen from France [the French cardinals] are always in a hurry. They want the work [of the Conclave] done as soon as ever they arrive. When the Pope is elected they remain here a few weeks to amuse themselves; they are fêted by everybody, and made much of by the new Pope. Then they go home, and hear no more of the Pope, except from a distance, for the rest of their lives. But I have to remain under the rod! He is my sovereign. He can put me in prison if he pleases. Messieurs the foreign cardinals must be good enough to allow me to take sufficient time in deciding on my choice to take care of my own interests." More and more, however, those once terrible and mysterious gatherings came to resemble in their operation the election to the wardenship of a college in an English university. The Popes are in the main amiable and easy-going old gentlemen, not distinguished for ability, or for ascetic sanctity, or for laxity of moral conduct, or for anything, in short. More and more would a man characterized by any one of the above notes be felt by members of the Sacred College to be one unfitted for occupying St. Peter's seat. There have been cardinals of distinguished ability in various lines and departments during this period, but they did not become Popes. The lives of the men who were deemed fitted for the post of the Supreme Pastors of Christendom were passed in enacting their parts in a

mass of ceremonial and prescriptions of etichette, which had in the course of generations become so intricate and complicated that the professional masters of it alone could find their way and that of their superiors through its mazes, and so onerous that the due performance of "scenic worship," as Carlyle calls it, might entitle an aged man to feel that in accomplishing his task he was labouring severely as well as faithfully in his high and sacred calling.

Of the Conclaves that elected them, what has been said must suffice for a specimen; for the remianing pages of this volume are needed for the purpose of giving the reader a brief description of the ceremonial of a Conclave as it now is-as it was, rather, thirty years ago, and as it probably will be in all essentials on the next not far-distant occasion.