Page xxxvi. The Irish Mission in England during the seventh century was one of the great things of history.

The following expressions of Dr. von DÖllinger respecting the Irish Church are more ardent than any I have ventured to use:—

'During the sixth and seventh centuries the Church of Ireland stood in the full beauty of its bloom. The spirit of the Gospel operated amongst the people with a vigorous and vivifying power: troops of holy men, from the highest to the lowest ranks of society, obeyed the counsel of Christ, and forsook all things that they might follow Him. There was not a country in the world, during this period, which could boast of pious foundations or of religious communities equal to those that adorned this far distant island. Among the Irish the doctrines of the Christian religion were preserved pure and entire; the names of heresy or of schism were not known to them; and in the Bishop of Rome they acknowledged and venerated the Supreme Head of the Church on earth, and continued with him, and through him with the whole Church, in a never interrupted communion. The schools in the Irish cloisters were at this time the most celebrated in all the West.... The strangers who visited the island, not only from the neighbouring shores of Britain, but also from the most remote nations of the Continent, received from the Irish people the most hospitable reception, a gratuitous entertainment, free instruction, and even the books that were necessary for the studies.... On the other hand, many holy and learned Irishmen left their own country to proclaim the Faith, to establish or to reform monasteries in distant lands, and thus to become the benefactors of almost every country in Europe.... The foundation of many of the English Sees is due to Irishmen.... These holy men served God, and not the world; they possessed neither gold nor silver, and all that they received from the rich passed through their hands into the hands of the poor. Kings and nobles visited them from time to time only to pray in their churches, or to listen to their sermons; and as long as they remained in the cloisters they were content with the humble food of the brethren. Wherever one of these ecclesiastics or monks came, he was received by all with joy; and whenever he was seen journeying across the country, the people streamed around him to implore his benediction, and to hearken to his words. The priests entered the villages only to preach or to administer the Sacraments; and so free were they from avarice, that it was only when compelled by the rich and noble that they would accept lands for the erection of monasteries.'

Page xliii. For both countries that early time was a period of wonderful spiritual greatness.

I cannot deny myself the pleasure of quoting the following passage illustrating the religious greatness both of the Irish and the English at the period referred to:—

'The seventh and eighth centuries are the glory of the Anglo-Saxon Church, as the sixth and seventh are of the Irish. As the Irish missionaries travelled down through England, France, and Switzerland, to Lower Italy, and attempted Germany at the peril of their lives, converting the barbarian, restoring the lapsed, encouraging the desolate, collecting the scattered, and founding churches, schools, and monasteries as they went along; so amid the deep pagan woods of Germany, and round about, the English Benedictine plied his axe, and drove his plough, planted his rude dwelling, and raised his rustic altar upon the ruins of idolatry; and then, settling down as a colonist upon the soil, began to sing his chants and to copy his old volumes, and thus to lay the slow but sure foundations of the new civilisation. Distinct, nay antagonistic, in character and talents, the one nation and the other, Irish and English—the one more resembling the Greek, the other the Roman—open from the first perhaps to jealousies as well as rivalries, they consecrated their respective gifts to the Almighty Giver, and, labouring together for the same great end, they obliterated whatever there was of human infirmity in their mutual intercourse by the merit of their common achievements. Each by turn could claim pre-eminence in the contest of sanctity and learning. In the schools of science England has no name to rival Erigena in originality, or St. Virgil in freedom of thought; nor (among its canonised women) any saintly virgin to compare with St. Bridget; nor, although it has 150 saints in its calendar, can it pretend to equal that Irish multitude which the Book of Life alone is large enough to contain. Nor can Ireland, on the other hand, boast of a doctor such as St. Bede, or of an apostle equal to St. Boniface, or of a martyr like St. Thomas; or of so long a catalogue of royal devotees as that of the thirty male or female Saxons who, in the course of two centuries, resigned their crowns; or as the roll of twenty-three kings, and sixty queens and princes, who, between the seventh and the eleventh centuries, gained a place among the saints.'—Cardinal Newman, Historic Sketches, 'The Isles of the North,' pp. 128-9.

Page 16.

This image will be found in the description of a Scandinavian sea-fight in a remarkable book less known than it deserves to be, The Invasion, by Gerald Griffin, author of The Collegians.

The Saxons were, however, in early times as much pirates as the Danes were at a later.

Page 18. The achievement of Hastings had been rehearsed at a much earlier period by Harald.

Page 39. At Ely, Elmham, and beside the Cam.

In the reign of Sigebert, Felix, Bishop of East Anglia, founded schools respecting which Montalembert remarks: 'Plusieurs ont fait remonter À ces Écoles monastiques l'origine de la cÉlÈbre universitÉ de Cambridge.'

Page 44. How beautiful, O Sion, are thy courts!

The following hymns are from the Office for the Consecration of a Church.

St. Fursey. Page 67.

'Whilst Sigebert still governed the kingdom there came out of Ireland a holy man named Fursey, renowned both for his words and actions, and remarkable for singular virtues, being desirous to live a stranger for Our Lord, wherever an opportunity should offer.... He built himself the monastery (Burghcastle in Suffolk) wherein he might with more freedom indulge his heavenly studies. There falling sick, as the book about his life informs us, he fell into a trance, and, quitting his body from the evening till the cockcrow, he was found worthy to behold the choirs of angels, and hear the praises which are sung in heaven.... He not only saw the greater joys of the Blessed, but also extraordinary combats of Evil Spirits.'—Bede, Hist. book iii. cap. xix. 'C'Était un moine irlandais nommÉ Fursey, de trÈs-noble naissance et cÉlÈbre depuis sa jeunesse dans son pays par sa science et ses visions.... Dans la principale de ses visions AmpÈre et Ozanam se sont accordÉs À reconnaÎtre une des sources poÉtiques de la Divine ComÉdie.'—Montalembert, Les Moines d'Occident, tome iv. pp. 93-4.

Page 116. 'None loveth Song that loves not Light and Truth.'

This is one of the poetic aphorisms of Cadoc, a Cambrian prince and saint, educated in the Irish monastery of Lismore, and afterwards the founder of the great Welsh monastery of Llancarvan, in which he gave religious instruction to the sons of the neighbouring princes and chiefs.

Page 120.

This thought is taken from one of St. Teresa's beautiful works.

Page 141. Ceadmon, the earliest bard of English song.

'A part of one of Ceadmon's poems is preserved in King Alfred's Saxon version of Bede's History.' (Note to Bede's Ecclesiastical History, edited by Dr. Giles, p. 218.)

Page 180. Who told him tales of Leinster Kings, his sires.

'L'origine irlandaise de Cuthbert est affirmÉ sans rÉserve par Reeves dans ses Notes sur Wattenbach, p. 5. Lanigan (c. iii. p. 88) constate qu'Usher, Ware, Colgan, en ont eu la mÊme opinion.... Beaucoup d'autres anciens auteurs irlandais et anglais en font un natif de l'Irlande.'—Montalembert, Les Moines d'Occident, tome ii. pp. 391-2.

Page 191. The thrones are myriad, but the Enthroned is One.

Wordsworth (addressed to the river Greta).

Page 208. Saint Frideswida, or the Foundations of Oxford.

Saint Frideswida died in the same year as the venerable Bede, viz. A.D. 735. Her story is related by Montalembert, Les Moines d'Occident, vol. v. pp. 298-302, with the following references, viz. Leland, Collectanea, ap. Dugdale, t. I. p. 173; cf. Bolland, t. viii. October, p. 535 À 568. I learn from a Catholic prayer book published in 1720 that the Saint's Feast used to be kept on the 19th of October. Her remains, as is commonly believed, still exist in the Cathedral of Oxford.

Page 240. Your teacher he: he taught you first your Runes.

'The Icelandic chronicles point out Odin as the most persuasive of men. They tell us that nothing could resist the force of his words; that he sometimes enlivened his harangues with verses, which he composed extempore; and that he was not only a great poet, but that it was he who first taught the art of poesy to the Scandinavians. He was also the inventor of the Runic characters.'—Northern Antiquities, p. 83. Mallet asserts that it was to Christianity that the Scandinavians owed the practical use of those Runes which they had possessed for centuries:—'nor did they during so many years ever think of committing to writing those verses with which their memories were loaded; and it is probable that they only wrote down a small quantity of them at last.... Among the innumerable advantages which accrued to the Northern nations from the introduction of the Christian religion, that of teaching them to apply the knowledge of letters to useful purposes is not the least valuable. Nor could a motive less sacred have eradicated that habitual and barbarous prejudice which caused them to neglect so admirable a secret.'—P. 234. Mallet's statement respecting the Greek emigration of the Northern 'Barbarians' from the East is thus confirmed by Burke. 'There is an unquestioned tradition among the Northern nations of Europe importing that all that part of the world had suffered a great and general revolution by a migration from Asiatic Tartary of a people whom they call Asers. These everywhere expelled or subdued the ancient inhabitants of the Celtick or Cimbrick original. The leader of this Asiatic army was called Odin, or Wodin; first their general, afterwards their tutelar deity.... The Saxon nation believed themselves the descendants of those conquerors.' Burke, Abridgment of English History, book ii. cap. i.

Page 252. Like hunters chasing hart, to sea-beat cliffs.

This is recorded by Lingard and Burke.

Page 259. Bede's Last May.

This narrative of the death of Bede is closely taken from a letter written by Cuthbert, a pupil of his, then residing in Jarrow, to a fellow-pupil at a distance. An English version of that letter is prefixed to Dr. Giles's translation of Bede's Ecclesiastical History. (Henry G. Bohn.) The death of Bede took place on Wednesday, May 26, A.D. 735, being Ascension Day.

Page 265. They hunger for your souls; with reverent palms.

'But in a mystical sense the disciples pass through the cornfields when the holy Doctors look with the care of a pious solicitude upon those whom they have initiated in the Faith, and who, it is implied, are hungering for the best of all things—the salvation of men. But to pluck the ears of corn means to snatch men away from the eager desire of earthly things. And to rub with the hands is, by examples of virtue, to put from the purity of their minds the concupiscence of the flesh, as men do husks. To eat the grains is when a man, cleansed from the filth of vice by the mouths of preachers, is incorporated amongst the members of the Church.'—Bede, quoted in the Catena Aurea. Commentary on St. Mark, cap. ii. v. 23.

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