People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 7, 12 February 1903, Page 10

People We Hear About

Colonel Harrington, the young Catholic diplomatist, is receiving high tributes for his services in connection with the new treaty with Abyssinia. Mr. John L. Beare has been appointed Professor of Greek in the University of Dublin, in succession to Mr. J. B. Bury, lately appointed to a similar Chair at Oxford. Mr. Beare is a Fellow of Trinity College. nu TT v cP® v v. Peter c - Y <> rk e, assistant at St. Peter's Ohurcn, fc>an Francisco, has been appointed by Governor Gage, of California, a member of the Board of Regents of the State University, in place of the late General Barnes. Signor Marconi is reported to have made during his late residence at Bologne an important scientific discovery based on the nature of electric fluids, which enables him to decompose air at hardly any expense and produce pure oxygen. The discovery is stated to be almost accidental. The death, announced from New York, of Mrs Ulysses Grant, reminds a correspondent that the famous President was, by his marriage as well as b- often expressed sympathy, in some sort of personal touch with Ireland. Mrs. Grant was the daughter of Frederick and Helen Bray, of a good County Wicklow family, hailing, indeed, from close to the town of Bray, near to which there arc still resident some members and connections of. the clan. Mrs. Grant herself was born in St. Louis ; she married the future President in 1848, when he was a lieutenant in a State regiment. She has long survived her distinguished husband, so long that to the younger generation in New York she seemed like a curious page of almost antediluvian history, something utterly remote from the wonderful post-bellum America that we know. Her death, in her 76th year, removes a picturesque personality from New York society, and will seem almost like the definite closing of an historic epoch. Mr. Henry Norman, M.P., in the current number of ' The World's Work,,' pays a remarkable tribute to the abilities of Mr. John Redmond. Mr. Redmond's appearance is, Mr. Norman says, curiously unknown to the people of England. Moreover, the ordinary English reader hardly realises how great a Parliamentarian he is. He does not speak like an Irishman, except for his accent — with the outpouring eloquence and picturesque vocabulary of the typical Celt, but with slow, weighty, and, if need be, passionate speech, which never fails on great occasions to produce a deep impression. At his best, indeed, Mr. Redmond is an orator in the oldfashioned sense of the term, and as a Parliamentarian ho is unsurpassed by anybody in the House. It is a matter of common comment that nobody gets a more respectful heaiing or can win more marked concessions from the Government than the Leader of the Nationalist Farty. In other words, he is the ablest leader which, any party in the House possesses. Some correspondents have asked us ("says the ' Glasgow Observer ') how many of tho Irish Party are Protestants ? In point of numbers the Catholic members of the Irish Party preponderate, but in proportion to the religious views of their constituents the Protestant members of the party have a very generous rtpioer.tntion. Captain Donelan, Mr. Abraham, Mr. Jordan, Mr. Hugh Law, Mr. Swift MacNeill, Major Jameson, Dr. Thompson, Mr. Blake, Mr. A,rthur Lynch, Sergeant Kvmiihill, and Mr Haviland Burke are all Protestants, and almost every one of them represents an overwhelmingly Catholic constituency. Donegal, for instance, which returns Mr Law and Mr. Swift MacNeill, is an emphatically Catholic county ; and Clare, which has tolerated Major Jameson so long, is perhaps the most Catholic county in Ireland. No Protestant, whether in Butt's time, Parnell's time, or tho present time, who was a sound Nationalist, ever sought vainly the favor of any Catholic constituency in Ireland. The newly-appointed Maestro of the Sistine Chapel, Pom Perosi, has not relaxed his powers as a composer. His amazing fecundity in the output of church music has long elicited praise even from those critics who regard his many works as merely mediocre, but it is clear that the clever priest-composer has made enormous strides within the past two years in the art of musical construction. He is now preparing a splendid oratorio, to be entitled ' St. Cecilia,' and surely no more a-"ro-priate subject could be chosen for the display of the maturing powers of Father Perosi. Santa Cecilia has ever been an inspiring theme for artists, but it is strango that the great patroness of music has not been mado the groundwork of a sublime oratorio long ere this. A well-known musician who has been privileged to hear some concerted items from the forthcoming oratorio is loud in praise of the motifs and tho treatment by Maestro Perosi. Probably before Lent the new oratorio will be heard in Turin. Tn this connection it is as well to observe that Dom Perosi has gradually effected many desirable changes in the personnel and repertoire of the Pope's Choir, and he makes no secret of his preference for a judicious blending of the works of 16th and 19th century composers— discarding the old traditional usage of only employing in the service of the Church the compositions of the Palestrina school.