To St. Dubricius, St. Daniel, and St. David, the three dioceses of Llandaff, Bangor, and Menevia owe their origin; the fourth of the ancient sees, that of St. Asaph, sprang out of a monastic foundation which must be traced to a different source. It has been already said that the mission of St. Germanus and St. Lupus had been conferred on them by St. Celestine at the solicitation of the deacon Palladius, who by some writers is said to have been himself a Briton by birth. However that may be, his interest in the affairs of our northern islands induced St. Celestine, in the year 430, to send him to Ireland, after having first consecrated him bishop “over the Scots believing in Christ.” The Christian faith had, in fact, already penetrated into Ireland, either from Gaul or Britain, but the faithful were as yet few in number, and possessed no regular hierarchy. Palladius at first met with such success, that St. Prosper, in his book against Cassian, written about this time, was able to say that St. Celestine, after preserving the _Roman_ island Catholic, had made the _barbarous_ island Christian. He baptized many persons, and erected three churches in which he deposited the sacred books, some relics of SS. Peter and Paul, and his own writing-tablets. But soon afterwards the hostility of the native princes obliged him to withdraw from the country, in order not to expose his followers to persecution. As his mission was to the Scottish people, and not to any particular province or kingdom, he crossed over to North Britain, where several colonies of the Scots had already settled, and there pursued his apostolic labours with more prosperous results. His subsequent history is differently related by different authors. Some represent him as surviving for many years, and firmly establishing the ecclesiastical discipline of the North British Church. Others, with more appearance of probability, represent his death as taking place very shortly after his arrival in Scotland. It is certain, however, that regular discipline was established by him among his clergy, and that episcopal colleges were founded either by him or his immediate successors, in which young children were received and trained for the ecclesiastical state. Here the Scottish Christians of Hibernia would naturally repair, before the establishment of similar seminaries had begun in their own island, and among those who acquired the first seeds of learning in the Bishop’s school was Cœlius Sedulius, whose Irish name is said to have been Sheil. His history is obscure, but, according to Trithemius, he passed over from Ireland into Britain about the year 430, and afterwards perfected his studies in the best schools of Gaul and Italy. Having embraced the ecclesiastical state, he thenceforward devoted himself exclusively to sacred letters; but his “Carmen Paschale,” a Latin poem on the life of our Lord, betrays his familiarity with the poetry of Virgil. From another smaller poem