People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXII, Issue 16, 21 April 1904, Page 10

People We Hear About

The Right Rev. Mgr. Nugent, the foumder of the League af the Cross, was present recently at the thirty-second anniversary of the starting of that organisation in Liverpool and delivered a stirring , address. The Monsignor entered on his 83rd year on March 3, and is not only hale and strong, b,ul Uijttks nothing of undertaking long journeys by sea an|d land which would try young men.

Mr. Thomas J. O'Reilly, a Limerick man, whose residence in Cape Town is named Etin Lodge, and who was formerly .Mayor of Capetown and member in the Legislative Assembly for that city, has named his son, in honor of the cause of nationality, John Dillon, and has on the mantelpiece of his drawing-room, surrounded by many costly ornaments, a sod of turf brought from the old land, which he prizes among his choicest treasures.

Lord Herries, as is known, married a Howard, first cousim of his Grace of Norfolk, and the DiUke was a frequent and welcome guest at Eyeringham Park in the days wheu his wife was a very tiny maid," and loved nothing so well as to play and romp with her big ducal eousm. She was always notoriously the Duke's favorite and was proud to be known as Ins ' little sweetheart,' little dreaming that in the far-away days to come play would be turned to earnest.

The nomination of Mr. Edward Blake to act as one o£ the temporary chairmen of Committee in the House is a well-deserved compliment to one of the most widely respected of the Nationalist members. Between the Canadian and the Imperial Parliaments Mr. Blake has seen some thirty-seven years of Parliamentary life. He belongs to the branch of the great Blake family of Galway and Mayo, of which Lord Wallscourt is also a member. Mr. Edward Blake's father had a remarkable career. A graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, he emigrated early in life to Canada, and after a varied experience, in which he learned in succes&ion something of surgery and divinity, and also of the rough realities of a picwieer's life in I?he backwoods, he entered on a .study of the 'law. He was called to the Canadian Bar in 1838, became Professor of Law in the University of Toronto, and Solicitor-General, and eventually Chancellor of Upper Canada.

Mr. Jameb Jeffrey Roche, John Boyle O'Reilly's successor in the ochtorship of the ' Boston Pilot,' who was recently married to Mrs. Elizabeth Vaughan Okie, was born in Queen's County, Ireland, in 1847, but arrived witn his parent-s in America when two years old. He was assistant editor to John Boyle O'Reilly from 1883 till the dcat)h of that celebrated Irish patriot, journalist, poet, and orator, and then succeeded to his chair.

Speaking recently at Dundalk in support of the demand for a, Catholic University, Mr T. M. Ilealy said he left school when he was thirteen years of age, and that was all the education he got For the next deven or eigM years of his life he was working at wages varying from live shillings a week to a po.und, and he sometimes thought if t\hat University disability had not been cast upon Cat'hoi'ics, that he, and the son of many another man, mieJH have been engaged in winning those pri/es and in carrying of! those products and in acquiring that status which now seemed to be exclusively in the possession of Protest/ants Not that they grudged it to the Protestants, txut they claimed their fair share.

Lord Plunket, -who succeeds LoTd Ranfurly as Governor of New Zealand, is (says a London paper), like Lord Rathmorc, a Plunket with one ' t.' The twot'd Plunketts ace the Earl of Fingall, L,ord Doinsany, and Lord Louth The British Ambassador at Vienna is a Plunkett of the Finpalls ; the Hon. Horace Plunkett, \ ice-president of the Irish Department of Agriculture, is of the D'unsanys ; and the youthful Hon. O'tway Plunkett is t<he son and heir of the fourteenth Lord Louth. The Barony of Plunket has am|ply Justified its Croatian since 1827 The first baron was the Irish Lord Chancellor ; the second was Bishop of Tuam ; the fourth was Archbishop of Dublin, son-in-law of Sir Beniarain Lee Guinness, and brother-in-law of the future Barons of Ardilaun and of Iveagh. The Archbishop's son, who succeeded him as fifth baron in 1897, perpetuates tin is connection in his baptismal name of Lee. He will be well established in the Government by tJhe time he keeps his fortieth birthday next December. He has acquired a good diplomatic manner as hon. Attache at Rome and Constantinople, and has had the further advantage of being secretary to two Lords-lieutenant ; while when he made a god-daughter of the late Queen his wife, he made a former Viceroy of India his father-in-law.'