MATHEW, Rev. •TREOBALD, commonly known as FATHER MiornEw, was descended from an illegitima.te branch of the Llandaff family, and was born at Thomastown in Tipperary, Ireland, Oct. 10, 1790. On the death of his father, while Mathew was still very young., the kindness of the Llandaff family enabled the boy to enter the Catholic college of Kilkenny', whence he was transferred, as a candidate for the Roman Catholic priesthood, to the college of Maynooth in 1807. He left that college, however, in the next year. He relinquished the secular priesthood for that of the religious order of the Capucb'ns, in which he took priest's orders in 1814, and was sent to the church of his order in the city of Cork. His singularly charitable and benevolent disposition, his gentleness and affability, his simple and effective eloquence, and the zeal and assiduity with which he discharged all the duties of his ministry, won for him the universal love and respect alike of rich and of poor. To him was due the introduction of the religious, brotherhood of St. Vincent of Paul. He founded schools for children of both sexes, and contributed in a very marked degree to the correction of many abuses and indecen cies connected with the burial of the dead, by establishing a new cemetery on the model of that of Pere la Chaise, although, of course, of a far lesss pretentious character. But the great work of father Mathew's life is the marvelous reformation which he effected iu the habits of his fellow-countrymen, and which has won for him the title of APOSTLE OF TEMPERANCE. In 1838 he established an association on the principle of total abstinence, at first confined to the city of Cork, but afterwards numbering 150,000 members in the city alone, and extending to the county and the adjacent districts of Limerick and Kerry. The marvelous success which attended this first local effort led to the sugges tion that father Mathew himself should repair to the several great centers of population, especially in the south. Thence he gradually extended the field of his labors to Dublba, to the n., and even to Liverpool, Manchester, London, Glasgow, and the other chief seats of the Irish population, even in the DCW world itself. Ills success had something admost of the marvelous in its character. The form of en rgagement partook of the religious,
and was accompanied by the presentation of a medal, to which the utmost reverence was attached by the recipient; and an opinion prevailed among the poor that the mission of the " apostle of temperance" was marked by many miraculous manifestations of the assistance of heaven. It is difficult to form an exact estimate of the number of his association, but it included a large proportion of the adult population of Ireland, with out distinction of rank, creed, or sex; and so complete was the revolution in the habits of the Irish people that very many distilleries and breweries ceased from working. Among the sufferers from this great moral revolution the members of father _Mathew s own family, who were largely engaged in the distilling trade, Ivere some of the earliest and most severely visited; and it is painful to have to add that the latter years of this great benefactor of his country were embittered by pecuniary embarrassments arising out of the engagements into which he entered in the course of his philanthropic labors. Although very large sums of money passed through his hands, in payment for the medals which were distributed to the members of the association, yet the exceeding munificence of his charities, and the enormous expenses connected with his various missions, and perhaps his own improvident and unworldly habits, involved him in pain ful difficulties. A pension of X300 was granted to him by the crown in acknowledg ment of his eminent public services, and a private subscription was also entered into for the purpose of releasing- him from embarrassment. He died in 1856, but the fruit of his tibors is still visible in Ireland. Very many, it is true, of those who were enrolled in his association ceased after some years to observe the pledge of total abstinence; but very many also continued faithful; and while but few of those who abandoned the society relapsed into the extreme of drunkenness, the general tone of the public mind in Ireland as reg,ards the use of intoxicating drinks may be truly said to have undergone a com plete revolution, which endures to the present day.