The great St. Martin of Tours, the father of monasticism in Gaul, was inspired by the writings of Athanasius, and under the influence of that inspiration founded his own monastery at Ligugé, and subsequently at Marmoutier, on the banks of the Loire, which became the cradles of monastic life in Gaul. We have already seen that St. Patrick had full opportunity of learning the discipline of Marmoutier; and of course what he learned there and elsewhere, he carried home with him to Ireland. But his life was too full of missionary labours to be given to the government or foundation of monasteries. That work was left to the rising generation; by them it was undertaken and nobly accomplished. Enda of Aran, Finnian of Clonard, Brendan of Clonfert, and their associates of the Second Order of the Irish Saints, were the men who first founded regular monasteries and monastic schools in Erin. In trying to give a view of the general character of the monastic institutions founded by those holy and learned men, it is well to consider the subject in its various aspects; that is to say, the Buildings, the Discipline and Government, and the Work of an Irish Monastery. We have abundant materials to help us in this inquiry in the Monastic Rules, in the lives of the founders of these houses, and in the remnants of the ancient buildings themselves, which are still to be seen on our remotest shores and islands. But there is one work especially valuable in this enquiry--that is, _Adamnan's Life of St. Columba_, edited by the learned Dr. Reeves, late Bishop of Down and Connor. No other work that we know of is so valuable and so indispensable to the Irish ecclesiastical historian, and none has been edited with greater learning and impartiality. II.--THE BUILDINGS.