People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 20, 14 May 1903, Page 10

People We Hear About

Mr. Michael Davitt, who is called the Father of the Land League, celebrated his 56th birthday on March 27.

The committee formed to promote tne memorial to the late Lord Russell of Killowen met recently, and, having at their disposal a greater alum than is necessary tor the memorial in the Law Courts, decided to present a bust in marblo to tho Associated Bar of New York.

Mrs. Annie E. Donahoe, widow of Mr. Patrick Donahoe, founder of the Boston ' Pilot,' died on Monday, March 9, in the 79th year of her age. Mrs. Donahoe, whose maiden name was Davis, was in her youth a woman of great personal beauty. In 1855 she became the second wife of Patrick Donahoe.

Among the many prominent Irish-Americans mentioned in a New York journal as ' billed ' to visit Ireland this summer mention is made of Mr. John J. Finerty, editor of the Chicago ' Citizen/ and president of the United Irish League in the States. As it is close on 40 years since Mr. Finnerty, then a Galway stripling, left his native land, he will, doubtless, witness some vast changes in the general aspect of the country. Mr. Finerty, it is stated, will be accompanied in his lour by Mr. P. Shelley O'Ryan, a. prominent member of tho Irish National Societies in Chicago. Mr. O'Ryan, who is a Cashel man, was a leading Tipperary Nationalist in the Land League days of over 20 years ago.

Ihe following passage which occurs in the course of an interesting article published by the London ' Law limes, entitled ' Sir Charles Gavan Duffy and tho Bar ' will be of interest to our readers :— ' It is perhaps not generally known that the Young Ireland movement on its literary side was largely the work, of members of the Bar. Tho scheme for the establishment of the Nation," the organ of that movement of which Duffy was the editor and proprietor, was actually formed i« tho hall of the Four Courts, Dublin, as the result of a prolonged conversation between Duffy and John Blafce Dillon and Thomas Davis, who were both members of the Bar and leading contributors subsequently to the ''Nation." Then, again, John O'Hagan, "afterwards Mr. Justice O'Hagan, the first Judicial Land Commissioner : Mr. Michael Joseph Barry, subsequently a divisional magistrate; and Mr. John Edward Pigot, a son of Lord Chief Baron Pigot, who subsequently had a successful career at tho Indian Bar, were all members of tho " Nation " staff. That paper, which created a new litoiary epoch in Ireland, may without exaggeration be considered as a movement of the higher mental culture of members of the Bar.'

Mr J. F. Hogan, MP, writing in the London Daily Chronicle ' about the Pontifical Jubilee of his Holiness the lope, incidentally observes —One of the best descriptions of an interview with Pope Leo XIII, is to be found m a book which, from its title, ' Thirty Years of Colonial Government,' would hardly bo expected to contain anything of that sort It is practically the autobiography of the late Sir George Bowen, who wrote a 1 Handbook of Gieecc ' for the house of Murray, and published various other books of Eastern travel before he went out to Australia as the first Governor of Queensland. He was afterwaids Governor of Victoria, New Zealand, and Mauritius He was a versatile Irish Protestant, who distinguished himself at Oxford, and subsequently mastered Italian and other languages of Southern Europe. He was received with special favor at tho Vatican. Pope Leo said : 'We have had excellent reports of you from our Australian bishops,' and thanked him for his fairness and kindness in all matters appertaining to the Catholic ( hurch in the colonies. During the audience the Pope held the hand of Sir George's little daughter while he vivaciously conversed on colonial affairs. Sir George was deeply impressed by the Pope's charming courtesy, ripe scholarship, and statesmanlike mind.

Lady Butler, whose pilgrim notes from the Holy Land are on the eve of publication, has been all her life a great traveller. Her parents were staying at Lausanne (where Charles Dickens was their giuest) when Lady Butler was born, and many of her early years were spent m Italy, whei c as a girl she sketched "not only soldiers but monks. She had always an eye for a habit or a uniform, and one of her earliest pictures shows us a row of little peasant boys being! taught their catechism by a brown-habited, bare-headed Franciscan. She was in Rome at the time of the Vatican Council, and she went on the great English pilgrimage to Pontigny. After her marriage Lady Butler accompanied her husband to some of his distant commands, and it was during his tenure of the command of the British forces at Alexandria that she made the expedition to Palestine, which, is now recorded. Lad.y Butler writes with rare feeling of the scenes she visited , and her book is more of a Pilgrim's Script than any that has vet boon published in modern England. Not as a tourist, but as a worshipper, has she entered the Holy Places : and the sketches she there made were made, some of them literally, but all of them metaphorically, upon her knees. These occupy sixteen full pages of the volume about to appear, and they have been reproduced in colors under her own supervision in order to secure an exact fidelity to the ox'iginals.