Current Topics.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIX, Issue 29, 17 April 1891, Page 1

Current Topics.

AT HOME AND ABROAD.

DIBiCTLY or indirectly we are continually warned tub cablbs against receiving, without question, reports forONCK mobb. warded by the cable as to Cai hoic or Iri h matters. When there is a nnion of both we are, indeed doubly warned as to the matter. A week or two ago, we werv, for example, informed that the Archbishop of Dublin lud been summoned by the Pope to Rome, and that the object of bis Holiness was to obtain a firmer hold, in Tory interests, on the Irish Na'ional party. Naturally we c nsidered (he report rather doubtful— that is to say, we bad no doubt whatever that, had tbe Arcb bishop been summoned to Rome, tbe object of the Holy Faiher was nothing at all of the kind spoken of. But now we find that no special summons had been issued. Archbishop Walsh was not called to Borne for any purpose connected with Irish politics, bnt had gone there of his own accord to fulfil an engagement that had been made by him. The correspondent of the Boston Pilot, in fact, under date, Rome, February 7, writes to his newspaper relative to the progress made in building the Irish National Church in the city, as follows :— " The Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Rev. Dr. Walsh, has signified bis intention of coming to Rome— except, indeed, some very important event thould occur to prevent him— in order to preside at the religious ceremonies accompanying the inauguration of the temporary Church of S . Patrick. This formal ceremony will take place on March 17, the feist of the' National Apostle of Ireland. The Archbishop of Dublin may be said to have a spec ; al and paternal interest iv this great work in. Rome, as it was he who laii the foundation stone of the construction heie on the feast of S-. Brigi I, Ist of February, 1888. ' Tbe rational conclosioD is, therefore, that nothing had occurred to keep the Archbishop from fulfilling his engagement. A mor* important, though an oft repeated conclusion to which we must come is, however, that of distrusting the cablegrams that retjr to Catholic or Irish affairs, and of whose complete unreliability, as we have said, we are over and over again reminded.

-and that had little claim to their loyalty, effuse or otherwise. Bat even congested Connaughtmeo are not so dull as some people seem to give them credit for being. They knew very well to what they should attribute this visit of the Lady Lieutenant and the Chief Secretary'! sister Much chance they would have bad of such a vWt, htd it not been for the row kicked up of late years. La-lies Lieutenant innumerable have come and gone, fulfilling the hours of their »ice-regal splendour in Dublin without trou bling themselves about starvation in Connaught. or perhaps even knowing it existed there. The events of recent years, however, have aroused even Dublin Castle from ii» apathy and driven the wife of the Lord Lieutenant out to play the L^dy Bountiful, in a hopeless effort to reduce the people to their former condition of uncomplaining misery. But for this it is fortunately too late. Even the eff usiva loyalty to the Crown of congested C jnoanght can have noeuch results ; and though, no doubt, the kindness of Lady Zetland and Miss Balfour will meet with due recognition it will not succeed in deceiving or misleading the people

ANEW DEPABTUBB.

ever, already shown leason why we may claim to be absolved from placing an implicit belief in ihd cable- Nor do we think we need make auy marked exception with regard to tbe following meseage :— " Lady Zetland and Mibs Balfour are travelling through the congested districts on the West coast of Ireland. Tney have bean greeted everywhere with effusivd affection and expression* of loyaly to the down " Bat, by the *ay, " congested dismcts " is rather a doubtful expression when used in connection with the West coast of Ireland. Are there, indeed, districts in those regions that have bo far escaped the evictor and his crow-bar brigade as to remain, after so many years of active exertioa on the part of that estimable individual, congested ? We coofess the matter seems rather doubtful to ns, though, of course, we all know the case of the backwoods man, who, when a settler came to live within come twenty or thirty miles of his hut, pushed away many miles further into the forest ti avoii being smothered by the crowd. It all depends on the point of view from which the matter is considered. For those, however, who happen to know something of thi West coast oE Ireland and even a good .leal of V, from their personal experi-nce the" picture „f a sunno.? Conanu^ht popul iti . i turning out to gre^t Lidy Z tlandani Mms Balfour, or, indeel. any one else, with effusive expressions of loyalty to the Crowu is s,m"w(ut amusing. Th-y are, no doubt, a coureom and demonstrative pc-pic, and the visit of any amiable aod well- Imposed Udy among them woul 1 e?ok« mannerly greetings and loudexpr^ssio isuf good- ir ill. Wj wul venturo <o maintain, nevertbe'es^, th it not even one of the whole congested gathering ever g^ve a thought to the Crown. And what in fact, was the Crown to them 1 8o far as they knew anything of'the Crown at all, they necessarily identified iD with the liish Government

A NOTABLE CONVKBT.

ramer notable convert, who was Mr. White',, grandfather, and whom ha had venerated highly. Tbe old gentleman in question, lived to be n.nety-one years of a gJ , renting -o the last, we are told •< a siff-necked Connecticut Tory. Hi* grandson, woo was himself an agnostic, ,n a memoir written of him for his rons recommended him to them ..d ,n example," Wbosa virtues and graces," he wrote, " I cannot expect th-m*, tqual, but wb.ch I hope tb ey may emulate." Tha following passage we al 80 quote from the article alluded to. The Rev. Calvin White wißw iB graduated at Yale in 1786. He entered the Congregation^ Ministry, but soon passed ov.r to the Episcopal Church, la 1822 he made a further an J a final Chan.' and Tnded in the Church of Rome, whither he was led log.cally by hi 9 devotion to autboaty. It was an almost v , beard of step in the New England of those day., and lt astounded hi, neighbours aa much as if he had gone into downright heathen idolatry. But he was not a mao to commit his conscience to other peopled keeping, and he was always straightforward and uncompromising m whatever he did Ho wio no more afraid of becoming a Rotnaa Catnohc in oprxHit.on to tbe sen iment prevailing about him .haa he had been afraid to declare his loyalty to King George before the cowboy, of the Revolution. Yet he was a studious, r,ifi led. and c mrte ,m mm. wh , did not ootruie bis new fa.th even on his own familj, for th y c .nt.nuel to woKh.p in the Episcopal Church He went «ncr to R,maa Ca-hoic-ism simply through the acion of h!8h !8 own m.nd, and bis independent considerations of the facts of ecclesiastical history. Though he was a man of sixty years at the time, m full vigo- of hi 8 intellect, and the Homan Catholics would have been glad to make mac. of him he declined every proposal for his advancement in their ranks He remained at his Connecticut home evoa after ho was displaced from the Episcopal ministry, a simple layman. He never weakened in h.s new faith. He had saenficed to ,t his posit on, his prospects, all his worldly interests, but he would not draw back."

INDIGNANT IUALY.

The Italian Government s ill conlinaeß noisy as to the lynchings at New Orleans. But it ig only consistent with what goea on at home that indignation should be felt as to the inflation of punishment for murder abroad. Murder, in fact, and ser. 0 . 18 af>aaul. 8 from which dca h ensptg are now so omm-ra in Italy th*t they are looked upon as mere every- Jay events -which fam.luuty has robbed <f tneir horrors. The number of such cn-ues cjtnmittei during the tears 1887 and 1888, the last year, Lr which re'uru. are available! w7s 5 66b-fi-ureH that may give us BO ma xiei as to the state of the country. All this moreover, is to be tried to the act.on aad influence of tne secret euc.eties, .he members of whose advanced grades are sworn and practised to carry out all such a> S assinaUon 3 as are planned and commanded by their supe.iors. Such is .he Italy of the period, in which the authori.y of the Catholic Üburch hu been largely sup.reeded by that of the Revolution, and where the determination exists

Congested Connaught-men, it would seem, are the loyalest people possible. Such is the case, at least, if we may believe the cable. We have, how-

In an article, in the Atlantio Monthly for March, on the late Mr. Richard GraU White, the famous Shakespearian critic, musical connoisseur, and journalist, the writer gi,es us seme particulars of »

with the approval of the non-Oat holic world, to carry things still to extremes. We can fancy, therefore, that the gravity with which a ■ingle murder has been taken up in New Orleans and the murderers punished may seem by comparison a very outrageous nutter. Americans, nevertheless, cannot be expected, at least without a similar training, to look upon the affair with Italian eyes. If, moreover, the result of the uproar that has been caused be to make Americans more practically acquainted with revolutiouary methods and to teach them what they really mean, some good may be the consequence.

If the world any longer suffers from illness it will GOOD news fob apparently have only itself to blame. Not only • INTALIDS. have we Father Eneipp in Germany, curing every-

one who cornea near him with cold water, wet grass, and coarse linen, but we have Count Mattei dispensing electrified homeopathy from his castle near Bologna, and banishing diseases with a magic touch. The origin of Count Mattel's cares is, moreover, interesting. Having relinquished a wild and dissipated career, on which be had entered early in life, and turned himself to study — especially to that of chemistry — we are told he came across an unfortunate dog afflicted with a very bad form of mange. He watched this dog, and finding that it obtained relief by eating a certain herb that grew on the hills close at hand, he made a decoction from the plant and gave it with good effect to some people enfEering from scrofula. Count Mattel's medicines undergo in their preparation some process which he keeps strictly to himself. He is open as to tha drugs he makes use of to form his globules, but this particular •tcp in the process of preparation he performs secretly in his laboratory, to which no one is admitted, and he bas refused a great sum offered to him by an American for his secret. But are the Count's medicines efficacious 1 If we are to believe testimony, and testimony of a high order, and certainly quite disinterested, they are so most completely. There is the Bmpress of Austria ; there is the Prince Ladwig of Bavaria ; ther« are Cardinal Lavigerie, and many other people of note, who speak confidently of their own experience, or of what they have p&rsonally witnessed. Nor are the diseases said to have been cured of such a nature in all instances as to admit of any explanation possibly arising from the effects of tiie imagination. Cancer, for example, is among them, and so is leprosy. The late Mrs. Booth, indeed, failed in being cured of cancar, but she told Mr. Stead— from whose Review of Revietis we have taken these details— that she had not persevered in the use of the medicines. She said, moreover, that she had received great relief from them, and that so firm was her reliance on them, Bhe had ei acted a promise from her children that if attacked by the disease, which she regarded as possibly hereditary in her family, they would put themselves at once under thecire of the Count. Mr. Stead, meantime, proposes that such a trial shou'd be given in England to the medicines, as would fulfil the conditions laid down by several men of science to whom he had applied for their opinion as to what would foim the requisite test. For ordinary people, meantime, quite enough sjems already forthcoming o ensure for Comte Mattei, as indeed for Father Kneipp also, a very considerable degree of respect — if not an unlimited confidence.