supposed to have died of the disappointment. Great services are not
always the best recommendation; for it is difficult to serve the public
well without making some private enemies. Little griefs, long forgotten
by the offender, but carefully treasured up in the more tenacious memory
of the offended, have more than once proved insurmountable obstacles in
the path to the throne. Each, too, of the great Catholic powers has a
right to exclude one among the candidates, if the exclusion be announced
before the votes are all given in: a privilege which, as it narrows the
circle of the eligible and increases individual chances, seldom fails to
be faithfully exercised. Indeed, up to the last moment, no one can tell
who may and who may not be chosen. The most prominent candidates are
often the first to be set aside; and the election, like all elections,
from that of a President of the United States to that of a
village-constable, is oftener decided by a combination of personal
ambitions and interests than by those pure and elevated motives which
look so attractive in the programme.

The death of the Pope is announced by the tolling of the great bell of
the Capitol, and with all convenient haste the nine days' funeral
begins. Everybody that has been at Rome will remember the beautiful
little chapel on the right hand as you enter St. Peter's; for in the
niche above the altar is the group of the Virgin with the dead Christ on
her knees, one of the few works which the volcanic genius of Michel
Angelo could bring itself to finish in marble. In this chapel, directly
in front of this marvellous group, the body of the dead Pope, embalmed
and clad in Pontifical robes, is laid on a sumptuous bier, amid a blaze
of tapers, with sentinels from the Swiss guard at his feet, leaning on
their long halberds, and officers of the household in official costume,
and all that imposing mixture of sacred and profane which Rome knows so
well how to use upon all great occasions. And here, day after day, the