English Cabinet.

The new cabinet is officially announced as follows:

The Emperor of China has formally invited the Pope to open direct relations between the Holy See and the Chinese Empire by the establishment of a Papal embassy at Pekin.

Miss Gertrude G. McMaster, second daughter of James A. McMaster of the New York Freeman's Journal, was invested with the black veil at the Carmelite Nunnery, in Baltimore. Archbishop Gibbons performed the ceremony. This is the third daughter of the veteran journalist that has joined the various orders in the church.

Reports are again in circulation that Archbishops Gibbons of Baltimore, and Williams of Boston, are to be among the new batch of cardinals that are to be created at the coming consistory at Rome. It looks as if there might be two princes of the church in the United States. The two B's, in all probability, will be the honored Sees.

Gladstone has completed his cabinet, and is now in working order. The Dublin Freeman's Journal, commenting on Mr. Gladstone's election address to his constituents, says the prime minister explicitly recognizes that no settlement of the land or education questions in Ireland is possible without Irish self-government.

The New Secretary for Ireland.—New York Evening Post: Probably the most difficult place of all to fill was the Irish secretaryship. Considering the fate which has overtaken the last three secretaries—Mr. Forster ruined politically, Lord Frederick Cavendish murdered and Mr. Trevelyan undoubted discredited—any Englishman in public life, however able or brave, might well shrink from taking the place. But if any Englishman can succeed in it, Mr. Morley will. He has already, both as a journalist and member of Parliament, achieved distinct success in politics. He is a grave and weighty speaker, and, though not a sentimental man, has, what we may call, a philosophic sympathy with people of a different type of mind and character from the English, to the want of which the English failure in the government of Ireland has been largely due. He is favorable to Home Rule in some shape, and is ready to listen to what the Home Rulers say, and consider it, and is not likely when he gets to Dublin to put on the "English gentleman" air which the Irish find so exasperating. On the whole, in fact, the new cabinet is a considerable advance on its predecessor, as far as the Irish question is concerned, especially.

Michael Davitt Praises Gladstone.—Michael Davitt, speaking at Holloway, England, said he believed that Mr. Gladstone was the only English statesman that had the courage and ability to grapple with the Irish problem and establish peace between England and Ireland. The premier, Mr. Davitt said, had already settled the question of religious inequality, and had made an honest attempt to solve the land problem. His failure to deal in a satisfactory manner with the latter question was due to the fact that he had not gone to the root of the matter.

Parnell—"Would you," said a member in the House after the defeat of the Government, "under any circumstance accept the offer of the Chief Secretaryship?" Mr. Parnell's reply was:—"Certainly not. To administer any law an honest man must be in sympathy with it and believe it to be a just and right law. Now, I am not in sympathy with the English rule of Ireland, but believe it to be both unjust in itself and prompted by alien feelings. Believing this, under no possible circumstances would I have part or lot in administering it."

Martin I. J. Griffin in the I. C. B. U. Journal: Some time, in an amusing hour, we give extracts from newspapers of forty or fifty years ago, about the Irish "foreigners." It might teach a lesson to the sons of the then assailed and the newcomers. Many of them are using language about Poles, Hungarians, and the Chinese, just similar to the utterances against the Irish years ago. As many Irish now feel against others, so the "Americans" of that time felt against the Irish. If the Irish are now just in their denunciations they may think less harshly of those who maligned the Irish in the past. We Irish-blooded Americans must be just.

Personal.

Rt. Rev. Bishop Healy has arrived at Rome.

P. S. Gilmore gave two concerts in Madison Square Garden, New York, on Sunday evening, February 21, in aid of the Parliamentary fund.

Sir Edward Cecil Guinness has given £2,500 to pay off the debt on the Dublin Artisans' Exhibition, and to start a fund for the foundation of a Technical School.

Mr. West, the British Minister at Washington, is a Catholic and attends St. Matthew's Church. His pew is close to Lieut.-Gen. Sheridan's.

Thomas Russell Sullivan, President of the Papyrus Club of Boston, a rising dramatist and novelist, is a descendant of Gov. Sullivan, the first Governor of Massachusetts.

William Gorman Willis, a Kilkenny Irishman, 57 years old, who prepared the version of "Faust," in which Henry Irving is now making such a sensation in London, wrote "The Man o' Airlie," in which Lawrence Barrett has achieved distinction.

Parnell will be forty years of age next June. He is a bachelor and leads the simplest sort of life,—in lodgings, as a rule,—taking his dinner at a hotel. His habits are so quiet that he and his sister Anna were guests at the same hotel for weeks without knowing that they were under one roof.

Rev. J. B. Cotter, ex-President of the Catholic T. A. Union of America, is to deliver a series of free lectures on Total Abstinence, under the auspices of the societies that comprise the Catholic T. A. Union of the Archdiocese of Boston. The first of the series will be given in Tremont Temple, Boston, Monday evening, February 15. The reverend gentleman is devoting all his time to this worthy object, and should be welcomed by a full house.

Mr. Thomas J. Gargan, of Boston, delivered an oration in Halifax, Nova Scotia, before the Charitable Irish Society, of that city, on the occasion of its one hundredth anniversary. The president of the Charitable Irish Society of Boston, Mr. Morrissey, received a very cordial invitation from the Halifax society to be present at the anniversary, and replied that, in consequence of business here, he could not attend. Mr. Gargan, however, an ex-president of the Boston organization, was delegated to respond at the Halifax banquet for the Charitable Irish Society of Boston. Mr. D. H. Morrissey, president of the latter organization, has invited the president of the Halifax society to attend the annual banquet at the Parker House, March 17.

Rev. Patrick Strain, pastor of St. Mary's Church, at Lynn, Mass., has been presented with two elegant altar chairs, an easy chair and an altar robe, in appreciation of his devoted labors during a pastorate of thirty-five years. He went to Lynn from a charge at Chelsea in 1851. Since he has been in Lynn he has raised upward of $200,000 for church work. The old original wooden church is now replaced by a spacious brick edifice. There is also a flourishing parochial school.

Rev. Father Nugent has retired from the chaplaincy of the prison at Liverpool, where he has done so much good service for the last twenty-two years. It is said that the retiring chaplain will enjoy a well earned pension of £200 a year. During the twenty-two years of his sacred ministry at Walton, over two hundred thousand prisoners have passed under his charge. Who can tell the number that have been rescued from a life of crime through his ministrations?

Hon. A. M. Keiley intends to settle in New York City and practice at his profession of the law. On January 6th, he was admitted to practice at the Bar of that State, by the General Term of the Supreme Court. His standing as a lawyer was certified to by the Clerk of the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia; and ex-Chief Justice Charles P. Daly vouched for him as a moral person. As soon as he was sworn in, Mr. Keiley seconded Mr. Algernon S. Sullivan's motion for the admission of Mr. T. McCants Stewart, a colored lawyer from South Carolina. Mr. Stewart was admitted.

Notices of Recent Publications.

Thomas B. Noonan & Co., Boston.

The Altar Manual for the use of the Reverend Clergy. Price 75 cents.

This very useful book contains Epistles and Gospels for the Sundays and holydays. The Litanies, the Stations of the Cross, Litany and Prayers at Forty Hours' Devotion, etc., the whole forming a compact volume of two hundred and forty-one pages. Every clergyman in the country should possess this excellent book.

Excelsior Publishing House, N. Y.

Life of Parnell and What he has Achieved for Ireland. By J. S. Mahoney. Price 25 cents.

This is a pamphlet of one hundred and forty pages, and contains a sketch of the life of Parnell, with portrait. In it is introduced the lieutenants of Mr. Parnell, with portraits—Dillon, Sullivan, Biggar, Healy, Sexton, McCarthy, T. P. O'Connor, Edmund Dwyer Gray, William O'Brien, Mayne, O'Gorman Mahan, Rt. Hon. Charles Dawson, with the names of the Irish members of Parliament, etc., etc. It is just the book for those interested in the great struggle for Irish Home Rule.