People We Hear About.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 3, 18 January 1900, Page 21

Peop le We Hear About.

Ottmar Mergenthaler, the inventor of the linotype type-setting machine, died at Baltimore in October last of consumption. He was born in Germany on May 10, 1854.

Signor Foli (otherwise Allan James Foley, of County Tipperary) died worth nearly £10 000. For Madame Rosita Foli he had provided in his lifetime by the purchase of an annuity. He also left her a legacy, thp rest of his money being divided among his brothers and sisters.

The death is announced at Boulogne, France, at the age of 76, of M. Charles Joseph Edmund Connelly, formerly Judge of the Court of Cassation and Professor at the Catholic University. He was of Irish extraction.

Since the fall of the French Empire in 1870 there have been 39 Ministries. The average duration of each Cabinet has been rather less than nine months, and 411 Ministers have held office. The Foreign Office has had 39 chiefs, Finance 41, War 45, the Home Office 47, the Marine 41, Public Works 42, and the other Ministries a like proportion of holders of their portfolios. Only three of the 39 Cabinets have lasted over two years ; they were the Cabinets of M. Thiers and M. Meline and M. Ferry's second Cabinet. Five Cabinets have lasted more than a year ; they were the fourth Ministry of M. de Freycinct, the second Ministry of M. Dufaure, the first Ministry of M. Ferry, and the Ministries of MM. Floquet and Buffet, the last of which succeeded in over-passing the year by one day. The shortest Ministries were those of iM. Rochebouet, which lasted 20 days, and of M. Fallieres, which lasted for exactly 21 days.

The report, happily unfounded, of Miss Florence Nightingale's death, recalls to mind at an appropriate moment (says the Xew Era) that the heroine of the Crimea is still amongst us to watch the gathering of the harvest she has sown, Lady nurses are to-day an accepted quota in British civilization, the heroism of English women beside the dying a foregone conclusion. But in the fifties the work of nursing was considered unfit for any decent woman. It has even been said that if a servant became a nurse it was at once supposed that she took up the new occupation because she had lost her character. It is entirely due to Miss Nightingale that a change came over public opinion. Dr. Russell, the famous war correspondent, was the first to broach the biibject. Writing to the Times he described the awful horror of the Crimea and in words that paid high tribute to the French nuns at the seat of war he called upon the women of England to follow their example. The response was immediate. Miss Nightingale and her little band landed in (Scutari oa November 5. ]5,")4, exactly forty-five years ago. Among these ladies were ten Catholic nuns, for Miss Nightingale, whose interest in the sick had led her, in «pite of the existing prejudice, to study hospital methods all over Europe, had made friends with the Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul in Paris, and learnt there the value of a hospital nurse who combines knowledge with religious rule. The presence of these nuns caused an outcry in [England a^ preposterous as it was in bad taste. Many declared, with more conviction than truth, that Miss Nightingale was herself a Papist. The clamourers were happily answered by an Irishman • ' Miss Nightingale,' he said,

• belongs to a sect little known in these days— the sect of the Good Samaritans.'

In a late issue of the New Era there is an interesting Bketch of the Rev. Father Russell, S.J., the editor of the Irish, Monthly and brother of the Lord Chief Justice of England. Father Russell was born near Newry, County Down, in the year in which Charles Lamb and Coleridge died and lucifer matches were invented, or to be more precise, in 1834. All the family, save Lord Russell of Killowen, entered religion One of the sisters is at present a Reverend Mother in an Irish convent. Another was foundress and superioress of a convent in Pan Francisco, where *she lived from 1854 directing schools and various other Catholic institutions This lady was an especial favourite of the Lord Chief Justice, who paid her frequent visits up to the time of her death two years ago. The father of the poet-priest waß Mr. Arthur Rassell, of Killough. A preliminary groundwork prepared the young priest for his eoolesiastioal training at Maynooth, where his uncle, Dr. Charles Ruawll, was then professor and afterwards president. It waa to Dr. Russell more than any other man that Cardinal Newman owed his conversion. Towards the end of his collegiate course Father Rassell entered the Society of Jesus and was ordained in 1864. Church and school work engaged his attention in Limerick until 1873 since when his labours have lain at St. Francis Xavier's, Gardiner street, or at the University College, Stephen'B Green, Dublin. In 1873 the establishment of the Irish Monthly brought him to the front as a literary man, and revealed the true inwardness and aim of Father Russell's talent. The mere enumeration of the writers who have made their dibut in the pages of the Irish Monthly, or who have as it were ' matriculated,' and had been coached by its editor in the world of letters, would give some idea of its soope and influence. Nearly all the writings of Rosa Mulholland (Lady Gilbert) who by the way is sister of Lady Russell, of Killowen, including her delightful story of present day Ireland, Marcella Grace, first appeared in this periodical. So did several of the earlier novels of M. B. Francis (Mrs. Blundell, of Crosby Hall Lancashire). Father Russell's literary pupils in America could be counted by the score. Amongst others there are Mother Mary Austin Carroll, Kathleen O'Meara, Eleanor C. Donnelly, and Mary Catharine Crowley. The editor, who is himself one of the most industrious, certainly the most cultured of living Irish poets has rallied about him some of the best'talent in Ireland, including the author of those finished essays Lectures by a Certain Professor. W. B. Yeats, Katharine Tynan Hinkson, Dora Sigerson (Mrs. Clement Shorter), Hester Sigerson, Jane Barlow, Alice Furlong, and the Rev. P. A. Sheehan. The extent, quality, and quantity of Father Russell s prose writings and poems evidence his own industry. A few of these are At Home near the Altar, Moments before the Tabernacle, dim to the Altar-rails, Life of Father Augustus Law S.J., Madonna, l-Jiicharistic Verses, Emmanuel, Collection of Devotional Poem*, St. Joseph's Anthology, St. Joseph of Jems and Mary and Killowen Llyh. Ireland and the Catholic religion are his only loves. Indeed, his attachment to his native land is so deep-rooted that he has scarcely ever left it. He has never visited America though he was deeply attached to his sister in San Francisco and has just written her biography for the large American edition of Ihe Men it nger <s the Sacred Heart. Father Russell, however lived for a few years in France, when he was preparing for the priesthood, and beyond these and two visits on compulsion to London no further breaks have interfered with the quiet life in his beloved Ireland.