other monks to the church. His companion found him lying before the altar, and raising his head, placed it on his knees. The whole community soon arrived with lights. At the sight of their father dying, all wept. The abbot opened his eyes once more, looking around on all with a serene and joyous expression. Then, assisted by his companion, Columba lifted as well as he could his right hand, and silently blessed the whole choir of monks. His hands fell powerless to his sides, and he breathed his last. [Footnote 7: "They that seek the Lord shall not be deprived of any good." Ps. xxxiii. 11.] What a scene! Such were the life and death of this great man and great saint. After having loved Ireland so much, he could repose nowhere more appropriately than in her sacred soil. His body was transported thither to the monastery of Down, and buried between the mortal remains of St. Patrick and St. Bridget. Thus those three names, for the future inseparable, became interwoven with the history and traditions, and engraved in the worship and on the memory, of the Irish people. Such were the men to whom Ireland owed not only her indestructible faith, but also her intellectual and moral civilization. {7} It is not sufficiently known that Ireland in the seventh century was regarded by all Europe as the principal focus of science and piety. There, more than anywhere else, every monastery was a school, and every school a studio of calligraphy, where the artists were not confined to copying the Holy Scriptures alone; but where even the Greek and Latin authors were reproduced, sometimes in Celtic characters, with gloss and commentary in Irish, like that copy of Horace which contemporary erudition has discovered in the library of Berne. Besides, in all those monasteries, exact annals of passing events were recorded; and these annals still constitute the chief source of Irish history. We recognize in them a vast and continual development of serious literary and religious studies, far superior to anything found in any other European nation. Certain arts even, such as architecture, carving, metallurgy applied to the objects of public worship, were cultivated with success; not to speak of music, a knowledge of which was a common accomplishment not exclusively possessed by the learned, but also by the common people. The classic languages, not only the Latin, but even in an especial manner the Greek, were spoken, written, and studied with a sort of passion, which shows the sway which intellectual preoccupations held over those ardent Celtic minds.