May we not conclude, then, that Ireland was much better prepared for the new religion than any other country; that, when she was thus admitted by baptism into the European family, she made her entry in a way peculiar to herself, and which secured to her, once for all, her firm and undeviating attachment to truth? She had nothing to change in her manners after having renounced the few disconnected superstitions to which she had been addicted. Her songs, her bards, her festivities, her patriarchal government, her fosterage, were left to her, Christianized and consecrated by her great apostle; clanship even penetrated into the monasteries, and gave rise later on to some abuses. But, perhaps, the saint thought it better to allow the existence of things which might lead to abuse than violently and at once to subvert customs, rooted by age in the very nature of the people, some of which it cost England, later on, centuries of inconceivable barbarities to eradicate. As to what exact form, if any, the paganism of the Irish Celts assumed, we have so few data to build upon that it is now next to impossible to shape a system out of them. From the passage of the "Confessio" already quoted, we might infer that they adored the sun; and this passage is very remarkable as the only mention anywhere made by St. Patrick of idolatry among the people. If it was only the emblem of the Supreme Being, then would there have been nothing idolatrous in its worship; and the strong terms in which the saint condemns it perhaps need only express his fear lest the superstition of the ignorant people might convert veneration into positive idolatry. At all events, there was not a statue, or a temple, or a theological system, erected to or connected with it in any shape. The solemn forms of oaths taken and administered by the Irish kings would also lead us to infer that they paid a superstitious respect to the winds and the other elements. But why should this feeling pass beyond that which even the Christian experiences when confronted by mysteries in the natural as well as the supernatural order? The awe-struck pagan saw the lightning leap, the tempest gather and break over him in majestic fury; heard the great voice of the mighty ocean which laved or lashed his shores: he witnessed these wonderful effects; he knew not whence the tempests or the lightnings came, or the voice of the ocean; he trembled at the unseen power which moved them --at his God. So his imagination peopled his groves and hill-sides, his rivers and lakes, with harmless fairies; but fairy land has never become among any nation a pandemonium of cruel divinities; and we doubt much if such innocuous superstition can be rightly called even sinful error.