Though the National Flag is primarily just so much silk or bunting, its design and colouring are full of meaning: and though its prime cost may be but a few shillings, its value is priceless, for the national honour is enwrapped in its folds, and the history of centuries is figured in the symbolism of its devices. It represents to us all that patriotism means. It is the flag of freedom and of the greatest empire that the world has ever known. Over three hundred millions of people--in quiet English shires, amid Canadian snows, on the torrid plains of Hindustan, amidst the busy energy of the great Australian group of colonies, or the tropical luxuriance of our West Indian possessions--are to-day enjoying liberty and peace beneath its shelter. Countless thousands have freely given their lives to preserve its blazonry unstained from dishonour and defeat, and it rests with us now to keep the glorious record as unsullied as of old; never to unfurl our Union Flag in needless strife, but, when once given to the breeze, to emulate the deeds of our forefathers, and to inscribe on its folds fresh records of duty nobly done. How the form known as St. Patrick's Cross, Fig. 93, became associated with that worthy is not by any means clear. It is not found amongst the emblems of Saints, and its use is in defiance of all ecclesiastical tradition and custom, as St. Patrick never in the martyrological sense had a cross at all, for though he endured much persecution he was not actually called upon to lay down his life for the Faith. It has been suggested, and with much appearance of probability, that the X-like form of cross, both of the Irish and of the Scotch, is derived from the sacred monogram on the Labarum of Constantine, where the X is the first letter of the Greek word for Christ. This symbolic meaning of the form might readily be adopted in the early Irish Church, and thence be carried by missionaries to Scotland. A life of St. Patrick was written by Probus, who lived in the seventh century, and another by Jocelin, a Cistercian monk of the twelfth century, and this latter quotes freely from four other lives of the Saint that were written by his disciples.