Most of the history which has been written during the past four centuries has been a conspiracy against truth, but in these opening years of the twentieth century history is being rewritten in the light of historical research, and in keeping with the spirit of truth and justice. The late Lord Acton was the pioneer, and his example is being followed by some of the great scholars of Germany and other European countries, which may throw a flood of light on the chronicles and traditions of St. Brendan, as well as on the golden Age of Hibernia. St. Brendan attended the inauguration of Aedh Caemh (anglicized Hugh Keeffe), the first Christian King of Cashel in Tipperary in 570, when he took the place of the official bard, who was a Pagan. On that occasion he converted the bard to Christianity and gave him the name of Colman, now known as St. Colman of Cloyne, in whose honor St. Colman’s College at Fermoy was named. According to Ussher, St. Brendan died at Annadown in 577, in the 94th year of his age, and was buried in his own monastery at Clonfert. His day on the calendar is May 16—a day forever sacred to the memory of Hibernia’s greatest navigator. No complete compilation of biographical work fails to mention the name of St. Brendan, who is preëminently the mariner saint of the calendar. The literary fame of historic Clonfert is known only to the students of history. Most of the precious manuscripts of that great institution of learning were destroyed by the Danes and Anglo-Normans centuries ago, and its walls have long since crumbled into ruins. “Clonfert,” says the scholarly Butterfield, “should be dear to all Americans, because our first discoverer was Clonfert’s Bishop. The Sea of Clonfert will doubtless remain during future ages as a shrine of pilgrimage to numberless tourists, for it holds in its midst an honored grave, where rests the dust of the patriarchal navigator who first designated this hemisphere as a paradise of loveliness, to give happy homes and altars free to the myriad outcasts of the human family.” During the past two centuries, countless thousands of Erin’s sons and daughters have found happy homes and civil and religious liberty in “Brendan’s Land,” now and forevermore the land of Washington, which has been for more than a century and a quarter an asylum for the poor and oppressed of every race and every clime. Owing to the ruthless destruction of vast numbers of ancient Irish archives by the Danes and English, our knowledge of the first discovery of America is not as exact as could be desired, yet there is enough known to justify Americans, regardless of race or creed, in claiming the honor of that discovery for St. Brendan and his sailor monks, almost a thousand years before Columbus landed on the soil of San Salvador. [Illustration: HON. JAMES F. BRENNAN. Of Peterborough, N. H. Historiographer of the Society. ] THE IRISH SETTLERS OF SOUTHERN NEW HAMPSHIRE.