This is not the place to enter into the religious aspect of the Catholic question, nor if it were, should I have any wish to enter the lists of controversy as a champion of either side.

I can understand that for some minds the ideas of Church unity, of a mystic communion of the faithful, and of an infallible head of a spiritual body have a strange attraction, nay, even a real existence.

I can understand too, that for such persons all the pomps and pageantry of the Papal services present themselves under an aspect to me unintelligible.

Whether these ideas be right or wrong, I am not able, nor do I care, to argue.
The Pontifical ceremonies, however, have not only a spiritual aspect, but a material and very matter-of-fact one.

They are after all great spectacles got up with the aid of music and upholstery and dramatic mechanism.