We cannot resist the pleasure of giving, though it be but very incomplete and pale, a sketch of the great monk of Clonard, the apostle of Caledonia, St. Columba.[Footnote 2] Sprung from the noble race of O'Niall, which ruled Ireland during six centuries, educated at Clonard, in one of those immense monasteries which recalled the memory of the monastic cities of the Thebaid, he was the chief founder, though hardly twenty-nine years old, of a multitude of religious houses. More than thirty-seven in Ireland claim him as their founder. He was a poet of great renown, and a musician skilled in singing that national poetry of Erin, which so intimately harmonizes with Catholic faith. He lived in fraternal union with the other poets of his country, with those famous bards, whom he was afterward to protect and save from their enemies. Besides being a great traveller, like the most of the Irish saints and monks whose memory has been preserved by history, he had another passion for manuscripts. This passion had results which decided his destiny. Having shut himself up at night in a church, where he discovered the psalter of the Abbot Finnian, Columba found means to make a clandestine copy of it. Finnian complained of it as a theft. The case was brought to the chief monarch of Ireland, who decided against Columba. The copyist protested; anathematized the king, and raised against him in revolt the north and west of Hibernia. Columba's party conquered, and the recovered psalter, called the _Psalter of Battles_, became the national relic of the clan O'Donnell. This psalter still exists, to the great joy of the erudite patriots of Ireland. [Footnote 2: The Catholic Publication Society will soon publish _The Life of St. Columba_, as given in the third volume of _The Monks of the West_.]