manual work. And so unwearied was his labour both by day and night, that it seemed as if the weight of every particular work of his seemed to exceed the power of man.” He penetrated into the Hebrides, and twice revisited his native shores, but on his return from such expeditions he loved to take part in the agricultural or scholastic pursuits of his brethren. He would hear them read or himself read to them, and overlook their work in the Scriptorium, where he required the most scrupulous exactitude. He himself was a skilful penman, and the magnificent Codex of Kells, still preserved in the library of Trinity College, is known to have been written by his hand. Iona, or I-Colum-kil, as it was called by the Irish, came to be looked on as the chief seat of learning, not only in Britain, but in the whole Western world. “Thither, as from a nest,” says Odonellus, playing on the Latin name of the founder, “these sacred doves took their flight to every quarter.” They studied the classics, the mechanical arts, law, history, and physic. They improved the arts of husbandry and horticulture, supplied the rude people whom they had undertaken to civilise with ploughshares and other utensils of labour, and taught them the use of the forge, in the mysteries of which every Irish monk was instructed from his boyhood. They transferred to their new homes all the learning of Armagh or Clonard. Of St. Munn, one of the pupils of Columba, it is said that he spent eighteen years in uninterrupted study, yet this devotion to intellectual pursuits was accompanied by a singular simplicity and love of poverty. Wherever the apostles of Iona appeared, they carried with them the reputation of frugality and self-devotion. Thus Bede remarks on the extreme simplicity of life observed by Bishop Colman and his disciples, how they were content with the simple fare, “because it was the study of their teachers to feed the soul rather than the body.” “And for that reason,” he continues, “the religious habit was then held in great veneration, and wherever any monk appeared, he was joyfully received as God’s servant; and if men chanced to meet him on the way they ran to him bowing, glad to be signed with his hand and blessed by his mouth. And when a priest came to any village the inhabitants immediately flocked to hear from him the Word of Life, for they went about on no other account than to preach, baptize, visit the sick, and take care of souls.”