promoting isolation and aloofness, and that the successful movement of the following century which drew Ireland back into outward harmony and more active communion with the Western Church would have been beset by far greater difficulties and might have been a failure. Even if the reform movement had been carried through in such conditions, there would have been the danger of a grave schism, like that which rent the Russian world in the seventeenth century when the reforms of Nicon the Patriarch were carried, but at the cost of dividing the Church for ever by the great _raskol_. The history of that episode illustrates the formidable resistance which a national sacred literature, partly consisting of, partly based on, translations, can offer to the ideal unity of a universal religion. If Greek had been originally established as the ecclesiastical language of Russia in the days of Vladimir, we may surmise that in the days of Alexius all national peculiarities and deviations which had been introduced in the meantime could have easily been corrected without causing the great split. On the other hand, if Gaelic had been established by Patrick as the ecclesiastical tongue of Ireland, the reformers who in the seventh century sought to abolish idiosyncrasies and restore uniformity might have caused a rupture in the Irish Church, which would have needed long years to heal. The Latin language is one of the _arcana imperii_ of the Catholic Church. It is true that the Irish Church moved on certain lines which Patrick did not contemplate and would not have approved. The development of the organisation which it was his task to institute was largely modified in colouring and conformation by the _genius terrae_. But it would be untrue to say that his work was undone. The schools of learning, for which the Scots became famous a few generations after his death, learning which contrasts with his own illiterateness, owe their rise to the contact with Roman ideas and the acquaintance with Roman literature which his labours, more than anything else, lifted within the horizon of Ireland. It was not only the religion, but also the language which was attached to it, that inaugurated a new period of culture for the island, and opened a wider outlook on the universe. The Irish were soon busily engaged in trying to work their own past into the woof of ecumenical history, to synchronise their insular memories with the annals of Rome and Greece, and find a nook for their remote land in the story of the world.