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OBITUARIES, FOREIGN. (STAINER STOILOFF.) 



Stainer, Sir John, an English organist and 

 composer, born in London, June 0, 1840; died in 

 Verona, Italy, April 1, 1901. He was the son 

 of a schoolmaster, and at the age of seven en- 

 tered the choir of St. Paul's Cathedral, remain- 

 ing chorister there until appointed to the post 

 of organist at St. Michaels College, Tenbury, in 

 1856. Four years later he became organist of the 

 university church at Oxford, retaining this place 

 with the organistship of Magdalen College, till 

 he succeeded Sir John Coss as organist of St. 

 Paul's Cathedral in 1872. An accident to his 

 eyes obliged him to resign this post in 1888. He 

 was knighted in the same year, and in 1889 he 

 was appointed Professor of Music at Oxford. He 

 did much to vitalize the interest in music at the 

 university, and his Sheldonian lectures on the 

 subject were always fully attended. He was an 

 excellent all-round musician, and enjoyed a wide 

 and well-deserved popularity, but no one work of 

 his stands prominently forth from among the 

 mass of his admirable scholarly compositions. 

 His works, which are very numerous, and in- 

 clude oratorios, cantatas, services, and hymns, 

 are simple in construction, and melodiousness 

 may be called their prevailing characteristic. 

 The most popular of all his compositions is a 

 sevenfold Amen, and among others may be named 

 the oratorios Gideon, and The Crucifixion, and the 

 cantatas The Daughter of Jairus, composed for 

 the Worcester Festival of 1878, and Mary Magda- 

 len, written for the Gloucester Festival of 1883. 

 Sir John Stainer was likewise author of the fol- 

 lowing works upon music: A Theory of Harmony 

 founded on the Temporal Scale (1871) ; Harmony 

 (1877); The Organ (1877); The Music of the 

 Bible (1879); and Composition (1880). 



Stephens, James, an Irish agitator, born in 

 Kilkenny in 1824; died in Dublin, March 29, 

 1901. He was a clerk to an engineer when in 

 1848 he took an active part in the Young Ireland 

 rising under Smith O'Brien in 1848, on the col- 

 lapse of which he fled to Paris with John O'Ma- 

 hony. These two planned an oath-bound revolu- 

 tionary organization which should unite the Irish 

 race in all parts of the world for the overthrow of 

 English rule and the establishment of an Irish 

 republic. Stephens was to go to Ireland to or- 

 ganize the society there and enlist and secretly 

 train the men who were to do the fighting, and 

 as he took the post of danger he insisted that he 

 should have supreme control of the movement at 

 home and abroad. The time for the rising was 

 naturally left for him to choose. O'Mahony's field 

 was America, and his task was to raise the money 

 to support the organization and obtain munitions 

 of war and to select trained military officers who 

 were to lead the insurgent forces into battle. 

 The name that Stephens gave to the society was 

 the Irish Republican Brotherhood. O'Mahony 

 chose to call his branch by the political name of 

 Fianna Eirionn after the legendary champions 

 of Ireland ; hence the name of Fenians came to 

 be attached to all the members. They were bound 

 by oath to bear true allegiance to the Irish re- 

 public, to obey implicitly the orders of their supe- 

 riors, and to take up arms for the deliverance of 

 Ireland when called upon. O'Mahony went to 

 the United States in 1853, and with other exiles 

 organized lodges in numerous places. Stephens 

 wnen he first went to Ireland in 1856 had poorer 

 success because the political movement had to be 

 created and it was opposed from the start by the 

 Catholic clergy. The Fenians of America gave it 

 an impetus when they brought over in 1861 the 

 remains of the dead patriot Terence Bellews Mc- 

 Manus for a political funeral in Dublin. Stephens 



started in 1863 a newspaper organ called the 

 Irish People, and in an anonymous pamphlet he 

 sketched in detail a constitution for the Irish 

 republic, with a president, senate, and chamber 

 of representatives, the latter to have one member 

 to 30,000 inhabitants elected every three years by 

 universal male suffrage and paid 300 a year; 

 the senate to consist of 150 members partly elect- 

 ed by the chamber and partly nominated by the 

 president, first for a preliminary term of five 

 years, and after that for life, and to have sole 

 power to impose taxation; the president to be 

 elected by the senate from 3 names presented by 

 the chamber and to draw a salary of 2,000*; 

 the seat of administration to be in Limerick, 

 while congress was to meet at Athlone. Stephens, 

 the head center, was exceedingly active, and not 

 less secret, in his movements, going about every- 

 where to form branches, known to the incautious 

 members who were caught and to the numerous 

 spies and informers who worked among them as 

 Shewk, which is the Irish word for hawk, a man 

 of mystery whose real name and abiding-place 

 were unknown, who could not be followed or de- 

 tected. Other Fenians were not adepts at con- 

 spiracy. Most of the plans and secrets came out 

 in print in the newspapers of Cork and Dublin 

 or of Chicago and New York. The day of the 

 rising was to be Sept. 20, 1865. Before that date 

 men who had fought in the civil war of the 

 United States on both sides in various ranks went 

 over to Ireland and in barns and empty stores 

 began drilling recruits in the use of rifles and 

 pistols, of which there was no great provision, al- 

 though $400,000 had been remitted from the 

 United States for the purchase of munitions of 

 war. Five days before the appointed day the 

 police seized the office of the Irish People and 

 arrested the principal leaders of the movement, 

 all except C. O. I. R., the Chief Organizer of the 

 Irish Republic, as Stephens was styled, for whose 

 apprehension a reward of 23,000 was offered. 

 On Nov. 11 he was found in the person of " Mr. 

 Herbert," a gentleman of fortune, residing with 

 his wife in a villa at Sandymount. .His trial was 

 appointed to begin on Nov. 28. On Nov. 25, with 

 the aid of two Fenians who w r ere officials of the 

 prison, he made his escape, and he was not again 

 captured, although he hid himself in Dublin for 

 four months, and in March, 1866, made his way 

 to Paris. When the Fenians of the United States 

 split into two warring factions over the question 

 whether, as Roberts, the New York dry-goods 

 merchant, desired, they should invade Canada, or 

 whether, as O'Mahony insisted, they should make 

 Ireland the sole objective, Stephens went over to 

 try to make peace, but without success. He 

 made a tour through the United States and 

 promised that Ireland would rise on June 1, 1867, 

 and that he would be there to head the rebellion. 

 When that date came and he was found still in 

 New York he was denounced as a traitor or a 

 coward, and his life was threatened, on which 

 he fled to Paris, and his disappointed., followers 

 derisively interpreted the initials C. O. I. R., 

 which he had been accustomed to write after 

 his name, to mean Cowardly Old Irish Renegade. 

 The feeling against him subsided, but he played 

 no part in Irish agitations afterward, and when 

 he quietly returned to Dublin in 1891 he was 

 presented with a cottage. His only subsequent 

 action in Irish politics was a declaration in favor 

 of Parnell when a section of the party discarded 

 him as leader. 



Stoiloff, Constantin, a Bulgarian statesman, 

 born in Philippopolis in 1852; died April 5, 1901. 

 He took his degree as doctor of laws in the uni- 



