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or body, purse or person, where duty called or conscience pointed. In the prime and height of his life, he sank suddenly into the grave, lamented by his own nation, and regretted by all those throughout Christendom who take any interest in the Catholic affairs of Great Britain and Ireland.

Of the works and days of this excellent person, I have told in the following pages all I could glean, from the very interesting papers committed to me for that purpose, by the surviving members of his family.

NEW YORK, ST. BRIDGET'S Day, 1857.

LIFE OF RT. REV. EDWARD MAGINN.

CHAPTER I.

BIRTH AND FAMILY OF DR. MAGINN-HIS FIRST TEACHER-STUDIES
AT THE IRISH COLLEGE, PARIS-ORDAINED IN IRELAND-APPOINTED
CURATE OF MOVILLE BRIEF ACCOUNT OF INISHOWEN
"THE
EMANCIPATION-MR. MAGINN AP-

DERRY DISCUSSION"-CATHOLIC
POINTED PARISH PRIEST.

AT the beginning of the present century there lived in the parish of Fintona, county Tyrone, Ireland, a Catholic farmer named Patrick Maginn. He married in early life Mary Slevin, by whom he had already seven children, when, on the 16th day of December, 1802, an eighth was born to them. To this child they gave in baptism the name of Edward.

The Maginns and Slevins were commonly spoken of, in that country, as "levitical families." For many gene

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rations each had given Priests to the altar, and teachers to the collegiate chair. When the dense clouds of the penal days rested on Ulster, the youths of those houses, unterrified by the cheerless prospect of such a life, traveled to the continent to store their minds with divine knowledge, and to fit themselves for Holy Orders. Our subject's granduncle, Rev. Patrick Maginn, was for fiftythree years Parish Priest of Monaghan; his uncle, Rev. John Maginn, was Parish Priest of Fahan and Desertegny for forty years, and in his latter days Archdeacon of Derry; another uncle of Maginn's died a Priest in France, having obtained the degree of Doctor of Sorbonne at a very early age. Among his maternal relatives, vocations were equally common. It is sufficient to mention Rev. Patrick Slevin, Pastor of the ancient Dromore, and Dr. Nicholas Slevin, one of the first and most eminent Professors of Maynooth College. The blood of these two favored families, rich in holiness, was destined to meet and mingle in the capacious heart and brain of the future Bishop of Derry. That the name he bore and the traditions which made it so dear, exercised a powerful influence on the whole career of Edward Maginn, we may infer from the glowing words of the letter to Lord Stan

* A third uncle Slevin, after finishing his ecclesiastical studies in the Irish College at Rome, fled from the city on the seizure of Pope Pius VI. by the French. He subsequently became a Medical Doctor, an l was considered one of the most universal scholars of his day."-Letter of the Rev. P. Devlin, of Buncrana.

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ley in vindication of the Confessional, which he wrote in the second last year of his life. Speaking of the loyalty of "confessing Catholics" to the Stuarts generally, and to Charles II. in particular, he demands:-"Who, my lord, was among the first to welcome the royal refugee to the shores of France?-an Irish friar, my own namesake, afterwards chaplain to the queen-mother, Henrietta. The hard earnings of a long life, which he kept by him for the pious purpose of educating for the holy ministry his proscribed race at home, on bended knees, with the generous devotion of an Irish heart, he poured into the lap of poor exiled royalty. So much, my lord, for an Irish, denouncing, confessing, secret-keeping Christian friar. The same was afterwards the founder of the Irish College of the Lombards, which supplied Ireland for centuries with priests and martyrs, who kept the faith, and mark you, my lord, loyalty alive, in spite of the united efforts of the powers of darkness and of your non-confessing Christians to extinguish both." This generous "Irish friar" is further stated to have been "one of his own family,”* and we will by-and-bye see the author of this tribute to his virtues, enjoying the fruits of that far-seeing charity which provided, in the evil days, a school for the education of outlawed Irish students in the capital of France.

While yet a child of four years old, the parents of Edward Maginn removed from Fintona to Buncrana, on *Letter of Rev. John McLaughlin, of Derry.

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