People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 6, 11 February 1909, Page 228

People We Hear About

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One of the unexpected events of the national election in the United States was the defeat of Mr. Bourke Cockran in New York. The presence of the famous Irish-American orator will be ..missed in Congress.

Lady Ellen Russell of Killowen is the daughter of Stevenston Mulholland/ M.D., of Belfast. In 1858 she married Lord Russell of Killowen, who was Lord Chief Justice of England from 1894 to 1900. Like her sisters, Lady Gilbert and Miss Clara Mulholland, Lady Russell is an author of some repute. Her stories have been contributed to periodicals, but none of- them have yet been published in book form.

Mr. Jeremiah MacVeagh, M.P., has been the 'member of Parliament for South Down since 1902. Mr. MacVeagh, who is a journalist, was born in 1870, and is the son of Mr. Thomas MacVeagh, a Belfast ship owner. He was educated at Belfast and at*the Royal University of Ireland, and he is the London correspondent of the Belfast Irish News, and was formerly the special Irish correspondent of the London. Daily News. Right Rev. Mgr. Robert Fraser, D.D., LL.D., the Rector of Scots College, Rome, was ordained in Rome in1882, and thereafter, until 1897, he was engaged in mission work in Scotland, and he was also for a considerable time a professor at Blairs College. In 1897 he became Rector of the famous Roman College for Scottish clerical students, and his excellent work in that institution is well known to everyone. In 1893 Father Fraser was named Domestic Prelate, and in 1904 Protonotary Apostolic. On the occasion of his sacerdotal jubilee, Mgr. Fraser received a congratulatory letter from his Holiness Pope Pius X.

In the presence of a distinguished and brilliant assemblage, with military show and martial music, the Federal statue of General Philip H. Sheridan^ cherished as one of the nation's greatest soldiers, was unveiled -in Sheridan Circle, Washington, on November 25, by the dead hero's son, Lieutenant Philip H. Sheridan. With President Roosevelt sat the widow of General Sheridan, with her daughters and son and her husband's brother, BrigadierGeneral Michael V. Sheridan, U.S.A., Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, Cabinet members, members of the diplomatic corps, high officers of the army and navy, and many leaders outside of official life in the society of the capital.

It" may not be generally known that the late Lord Petre was related to the historic North-country family of the Earl of Derwentwater, the ill-fated owner of Dilston Castle and estate. The eighth Lord Petre in 1732 married the only daughter of the Earl of Derwentw&ter, from whom the late Lord Petre descended. In the ancestral home of the Petres at Thorndon, in Essex, are preserved numerous relics of the unfortunate Earl of Derwentwater, together with the suit of black velvet which he wore on the scaffold. And there the remains of the Earl are now at rest in the family vault of the Petres, near to those of his daughter. After the sale of the Dilston estate in 1874, the coffins in the private chapel were removed to the cemetery of the Catholic church at Hexham; but that of the Earl of Derwentwater was taken to the Petre vault at Thorndon.

General Sir William Butler, in the course of a lecture in .Dublin on c Charles Stewart Parnell,' said it might be asked what was the secret source of the great success and the rapid pre-eminence of the great Irish leader. The answer, he tho 4 ught, could be given in a few words. The inner force or essence of .Parnell 5 s nature was neither political nor administrative, legal, or judicial or academic; his innermost instinct was rule, command. He thought the word 'hold' best suited the attribute in the catalogue of phrases which men had coined to express the supreme in human nature. Had Parnell adopted the military profession, he had in him, in the highest degree, that natural instinct, rapidity of judgment, which was the first essential in war. Rule, judgment, daring: these were the qualities the possession of which made Charles SteVart Parnell, at the age of 30, the most powerful leader known in Ireland during the last 700 years of her hariowed history. But, running under and through those great rocks of character foundation, there was something else which was altogether the product of the land in which he was born, and of the times in which he lived. Courage, grasp/judgment belonged to no particular land or class, but this other quality of which he spoke was essentially Irish. He could find no precise name for it in the English language, perhaps, because persons of peculiarly English race seemed to be -little accustomed to use it. - It was sympathy with suffering peoples, it was rage and anger against injustice.