Nevertheless, as Christian blood had flowed for a comparative trifle, and through the fault of a monk, a synod was convened and Columba was excommunicated. He succeeded in having the sentence cancelled; but he was commanded to gain to God, by his preaching, as many souls as he had destroyed Christians in the battle of Cooldrewny. To this injunction his confessor added the hardest of penances for a soul so passionately attached, as was that of Columba, to his country and his friends. {4} The penitent was compelled to exile himself from Ireland for ever. Columba submitted. Twelve of his disciples refused to leave him, and embarking with them on one of those large osier, hide-covered boats which the Celtic peoples were accustomed to use in navigation, he landed on an island called Oronsay. He ascended a hill near the shore, and looking toward the south, perceived that he could still see the Irish coast. He reëmbarked immediately, and sailed in quest of a more distant isle, from which his native land should be no longer visible. He at last touched the small desert island of Iona, and chose for his abode this unknown rock, which he has made a partaker of his own immortality. We should read in M. de Montalembert's work the eloquent description of the Hebrides, and of that sandy and sterile shore of Iona, rendered glorious by so many virtues. "'We were now treading,' wrote Dr. Johnson, the great moralist of the eighteenth century, 'that illustrious island which was once the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and roving barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge and the blessings of religion. To abstract the mind from all local emotion would be impossible if it were endeavored, and would be foolish if it were possible.'[Footnote 3] And he recited with enthusiasm those verses from Goldsmith's _Traveller_: 'Stern o'er each bosom reason holds her state, With daring aims irregularly great. Pride in their port, defiance in their eye, I see the lords of human kind pass by; Intent on high designs, a thoughtful band. By forms unfashioned, fresh from nature's hand. Fierce in their native hardiness of soul. True to imagined right, above control, While even the peasant boasts these rights to scan, And learns to venerate himself as man.' [Footnote 4] [Footnote 3: _Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland_. By Dr. Johnson,] [Footnote 4: _The Monks of the West_, vol. iv. book xi. ch. 3.]