Men of the Time, eleventh edition/Burke, Thomas N.
BURKE, The Rev. Thomas N., was born in the town of Galway, Ireland, in 1830. At the age of seventeen he went to Rome and from thence to Perugia, where he entered the Order of St. Dominic, commencing his novitiate and the study of philosophy. From Perugia he was again sent to Rome, where he studied theology at the College of the Minerva and Santa Sabina. After having thus spent five years in Italy he was sent by the superior of his Order to England, where he was ordained priest. He spent four years on the English mission in Gloucestershire, and was then sent to Ireland to found a novitiate and house of studies for his Order at Tallaght near Dublin. This he successfully accomplished, and for the next seven years he was busily employed in the care of the new establishment and in giving missions in different parts of Ireland. He was next sent to Rome as Superior of the monastery of Irish Dominicans at San Clemente. After the death of Cardinal Wiseman, Father Burke succeeded Dr. Manning as preacher of the Lenten Sermons in English in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo. He continued to preach these sermons for five years. After his return to Ireland he was attached to St. Saviour's Dominican Church in Dublin. In 1872 he visited the United States, having been appointed visitor to the houses of the Dominican community on the American continent. He delivered sermons and lectures in all parts of the Union and acquired extraordinary popularity as an orator. His celebrated series of lectures in answer to Mr. Froude the historian on the relations between England and Ireland caused much excitement and produced an animated controversy. The first of these lectures was delivered Nov. 12, 1872, in the Academy of Music, New York. Father Burke has since returned to his native country. His works are: "English Misrule in Ireland," a course of lectures in reply to Mr. Froude, 12mo, New Tork, 1873; "Ireland's Case stated in Reply to Mr. Froude," New York, 1873; "Lectures and Sermons," New York, 1873; "Lectures on Faith and Fatherland," 1874.