People.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIX, Issue 51, 19 December 1901, Page 10

People.

A humble Franciscan lay Brother, Hugo Linderath, of Dusseldorf, has received from the Pope a letter of congratulation on the superb works of sculpture that have proceeded from his hands. When Mr. Charles M. Schwab turner! the magnificent new church of St. Michael, Altoona, Pa., over to the people of Loretto, he announced that the first couple to be married therein would receive his cheque for §1000. On account of the rules of the Church in regard to publishing the banns of marriage, a rush to the altar was impossible.. It happened that Edward A. McGuire and Miss Susan E. Little both of Loretto, were able to apply for marriage before any other couple. A Chair of Gaelic will be established at Notre Dame University in Indiana. For the present it will be occuped by Brother Finan, one of , the members of the Congregation of the Holy Cross. There has just been found in the historic castle of Wolfegg, Wurteniberg, what are declared to be the first maps that contain the name and geographical outlines of America. They were discovered by Rev. Joseph Fischer, a pr>iest and professor of geography at Feldkirck, the capital of the Austrian province of Vorarlberg. The maps bear respectively the dates 1507 and 1516, and are in a remarkable state of preservation. The first, it is believed, was drawn under the personal supervision of Columbus. German geographers consider the find the most important of its kiind in modem times. For years the maps were regarded as hopelessly missing. Norden&kj old's last book referred to them as legendary. If Mr. Justice Mathcw, the new Lord of Appeal, were in his own country (says the ' Daily News ') he would, because of his religion, be subject to a curious disability. When the Lord Lieutenant is absent from Ireland (as Lord Cadogjan has usually been) a number of judges are sworn in as Lords Justices to perform his duties. Catholic judges cannot fill this office. It is one of the curiosities of Irish life to see Catholic judges as members of the Privy Council swearing in Lords Justices while themselves ineligible for the position. Mr. Michael Gunn, the we,l-known theatrical manager of Dublin, whose death took place in London recently, was in his 62nd year, having been born in Dublin in 1840. He was connected with several commercial enterprises in the city, and was also a director of some important Continental trade firms. He developed early a talent for music, which he cultivated to a high degree, and was a master of the violin and pianoforte. ITo was a member of the Corporation in the late sixties and seventies and remained in that body until the necessity for travel in connection with his theatrical and artistic ventures and private enterprises took up too much of his time to afford him much leisure for municipal affairs. He had a great love for travel, and hi,s experiences in Fr.ince and Italy, with the various suggestions that from time to time reached the Corporation, suggested to him the building of a theatre in Dublin. He was an accomplished lingiuist, speaking French and Italian fluently, and having also an extensive acquaintance with German. These attainments, and his extensive travels in the three countries, contributed to his being able to secure for the Caiety Theatre the best talent in Europe. Thomas Shaw, of Halifax, Nova Scotia will be 103 years old on January 3. He is hale and hearty for a centenarian, and takes a walk of over a mile every day. Last year when James A. Ten Eyck rowed Vail

the Canadian sculler at Bedford Basin, Halifax, Mr. Shaw walked four miles to see the race. Mr. Shaw was born in Carrick-on-Suir, an old town of County Tipperary, Ireland, January 3, 1799. He has had an eventful career. For 21 years he served in the English navy and was honorably discharged from the war sloop Vixen. He v then went to Nova Scotia, where he has lived ever 'since. Mr. Justice Day, one of the few leading Catholic judges in England, has retired from the Bench. He was one of the three judges upon' the famous Parnell Commission, and later on was President of the Royal Commission appointed to enquire into those recurrent abominations — the Belfast riots. The London ' Tablet ' has the following notice of him : ' Sir John, the descendant of a Somersetshire family, the Days of Englishbatch, was the son of Captain John Day, of the 49th Regiment, by his wile, a Dutchwoman, the daughter of Jan Casper Hartsinck of the Hague, and he himself was born in Holland. He had gone through preliminary studies at Freiburg, when his father returned to England, and the future judge was sent to the Benedictine College at Downside, taking his rß.A. degree at the London University in that memorable year —the year of Newman's conversion —1845. Degrees at Oxford and Cambridge were not open then to Catholics who respected their conscience, and this particular student did not dream in those days that he could live to see the disabilities removed. In regard to those and other changes, Sir John three or four years ago said : " I now live in times when I sometimes doubt if I am a Roman Catholic at all. When a boy I knew I was. Belonging to the generation which existed before Catholic emancipation, I had no doubt then that I was a Catholic and that other people were distinctly Protestants. Now "—Sir John added, with a touch of irony which only men of short memories will grudge him—" now I find other people are Catholics ! " '