The Irish were as adventurous as they were learned, and Montalembert bears witness to the national propensity in the following graceful language: “This monastic nation became the missionary nation _par excellence_. The Irish missionaries covered the land and seas of the West. Unwearied navigators, they landed on the most desert islands; they overflowed the continent with their successive immigrations. They saw in incessant visions a world known and unknown to be conquered for Christ.” And the author of _Christian Schools and Scholars_ reminds us of the beautiful legend of S. Brendan, the founder of the great school of Clonfert in Connaught, the school‐fellow of Columba, and the pupil of Finian at Clonard, who is declared to have set sail in search of the Land of Promise, and during his seven years’ journey to have “discovered a vast tract of land, lying far to the west of Ireland, where he beheld wonderful birds and trees of unknown foliage, which gave forth perfumes of extraordinary sweetness.” Whatever fiction is mingled with this marvellous narrative, it is difficult not to admit that it must have had some foundation of truth, and the poetic legend which was perfectly familiar to Columbus is said to have furnished him with one motive for believing in the existence of a western continent. Later on we shall find Albertus Magnus foreshadowing the same belief in his writings. Two of the Irish missionaries deserve especial notice—Columba, the Apostle of Caledonia, and Columbanus, the founder of Luxeuil in Burgundy. The former, with his stronghold of Iona, which “came to be looked upon as the chief seat of learning, not only in Britain, but in the whole Western world,”(43) is familiar to all readers of Montalembert’s great monastic poem, and to that other public who have had access to the Duke of Argyll’s recent work on the rock‐bound metropolis of Christian Britain. We are told that the most scrupulous exactitude was required in the Scriptorium of Iona, and that Columba himself, a skilful penman, wrote out the famous _Book of Kells_ with his own hand. It is now preserved in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. The monks of Iona studied and taught the classics, the mechanical arts, law, history, and physic. They transferred to their new home all the learning of Armagh and Clonard. Painful journeys in search of books or of the oral teaching of some renowned master were nothing in their eyes; they listened to lectures on the Greek and Latin fathers, hung entranced over Homer and Virgil, and were skilled in calculating eclipses and other natural phenomena. They astonished the world with their arithmetical knowledge and linguistic erudition, and their keen logic and love of syllogism are spoken of by S. Benedict of Anian in the ninth century.(44) Art was equally cultivated, but this, strictly speaking, is outside our present subject. As an example of Columba’s liberal spirit and devotion to