But when will that be ? It might go on
for fifteen years, like the Council of Trent, at this rate, only that Bishops who live in the Arctic circle or Japan or even in Kamtschatka can hardly take a run home for a short recess, and still
less can leave their diocese for years. The Vatican as- serts, we see, that a great many of them are very uncom- fortably lodged in Rome, up dark staircases in ill-furnished rooms, and will be doing penance so long as the Council lasts. Moreover, the Pope is spending a good deal on his visitors, and though he receives many handsome gifts, that is a special fund soon exhausted. It seems cynical to speak of a deficit in budgets as the secondary means of reducing an infallible organ of the Holy Ghost to earlier silence. But that must have certainly happened often enough in every Church—the Church at Jerusalem, for instance, to begin with, which was poor enough, and probably quite unable to afford any long entertainment to the deputies from Antioch.
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