tingent of clergy, the bishop proceeded to the erection of St. Mary's Cathedral in Hobart, which he was enabled to do through the princely generosity of a local Irish Catholic, Mr. Roderick O'Connor, who gave him the noble sum of £10,000 for the purpose. The spirit in which the bishop set about this great undertaking is shown by his own words, expressing an earnest desire for "an humble revival of that taste and skill which influenced our forefathers in the faith, when erecting St. Peter's in Canterbury and York, St. Patrick's in Dublin, St. Canice's in Kilkenny, St. Finbarr's in Cork, and the many glorious churches, the pride of our land." Dr. Willson was not spared to see the completion of the cathedral in whose erection he took so laudable a pride, but the structure has been finished under the supervision of his successor, the Right Eev. Daniel Murphy, the present venerable Bishop of Hobart. Dr. Murphy is the Nestor of the Australasian prelates, having worn the mitre for more than forty years, first under the burning sun of India, and afterwards under the beautiful skies of temperate Tasmania.
France is entitled to the honour of having planted Catholicity in New Zealand, but, just as in the other Australasian colonies, the working of the Church is now almost entirely in the hands of Irish ecclesiastics. Dr. Pompallier, the first bishop of New Zealand, landed there in 1838, accompanied by one priest and a lay brother. He, and the clergy who followed in his footsteps, made many converts to Christianity amongst the high-spirited Maories, and a large percentage of the present, but rapidly-vanishing, generation of New Zealand natives, is thoroughly and devotedly Catholic. One priest in particular, the Very Rev. Walter McDonald, has laboured for many years so
