Page:On papal conclaves (IA a549801700cartuoft).djvu/23

 rical incidents. The practical politician, living only for immediate interests, and absorbed in the desire of devising the means of satisfying them, might find much in a survey of this nature that may serve his purpose. For amongst the contingencies which the imagination of busy minds has been fondest of looking to, as likely to prove the means for healing the rupture which has divided the Court of Rome from Italy, none has presented itself oftener than that Conclave which must follow on the death of Pius IX. The future Conclave has floated before the vision of many anxious inquirers as an inevitable but mysterious fact-looming on the political horizon with the same perplexingly impenetrable certainty with which the heavy mystery of death hangs over the boundaries of individual existence. Everyone indeed has long felt that the Conclave which must assemble on the decease of the reigning Pope will be invested with unusual importance. Speculation has been instinctively attracted towards so broadly looming and unavoidable a mystery. It is not our purpose to attempt to cast the horoscope for the issue of the coming Papal election—to venture on the task of reduc-