It deserves to be noted, as a fact signally illustrative of the present intellectual condition of the world, that at the present moment a number of able and highly-educated men are assembled in Rome, devoting their best energies to the solution of a question which they entitle "The Immaculate Conception of the Virgin." Besides the Pope himself and the resident Roman ecclesiastics, some thirty-five prelates from different parts of Italy, and from Germany, France, England, Ireland, and America, are busy, laying their grey heads together in order to frame a final settlement of this question, which has been left undecided until now. The result will be that before the end of the present year, the one thousand millions of human beings who inhabit our planet will be furnished with definite instructions as to what they are to believe respecting the conception of the Virgin. There will no longer be that agony of suspense which has everywhere so visibly prevailed on this important subject. Strange!

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