NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE first Council of the Vatican, which is said by moderate critics to have been convoked in order that it may be not only the last as well as the first of the Vatican but the last (Ecu- menical council of any kind,—since who would grope about the edge of a reflecting telescope for celestial intelligence, when the object searched for was most clearly reflected in its very focus ? —met on Wednesday, December 8,—" the feast of the Immaculate Conception,"-803 fathers strong. The Vatican,—a temporary planetary appendage to our contemporary the Tablet, which is to be devoted to recording the events of the Council,—remarks that this Council numbers more than the members of the first three Councils, those of Nicma, Constantinople, and Ephesus taken to- gether; and that it includes representatives from Siam, Burmah, Chinese Tartary, Mantchouria, from Japan, from Costa Rica, from Hudson's Bay, from Senegambia, from Abyssinia, in a word, from almost all the sees represented in the first Councils and a great number of which the world of the first Councils had never even heard. There were present, besides the Supreme Pontiff, 6 archbishop princes, 49 cardinals, 11 patriarchs, 680 arch- bishops and bishops, 28 abbots, and 29 generals of religious orders. The day was rainy, but the spectacle seems to have been gorgeous. At nine o'clock, amid the ringing of the bells of every church in Rome and salvos of artillery from San Angelo and the Aventine, the great procession descended from the upper hall of the Vatican, down the great staircase into the lower hall, and so into the Cathedral. Regular and secular clergy were ranged in files on either side of the procession. The Pope knelt some time before the Mass, Cardinal Patrizi, Arch- bishop of Iconium, pronounced the inaugural discourse, the Pope gave his blessing, and received the homage of the Council. The aid of the Holy Ghost was then invoked, the prelates approved the opening of the Council, and the ceremony of the day was closed with the Te Deem.
