an that of a state, ruling over the hearts of men.
About two centuries previously, Ireland had become Christian; and an
image of its immemorial clan-system was reproduced in the vast convents
which ere long covered the land, and sent forth their missionaries over
a large part of Europe. It might well have been thought doubtful
whether these were likely to work successfully among a race so
dissimilar as the Anglo-Saxon; but the event proved that in this
instance dissimilar qualities meant qualities complemental to each
other, and that sympathy was attracted by unlikeness.

The Irish mission in England began at a critical time, just when the
reaction against the earlier successes of the Roman mission had set in.
At York, under Paulinus, Christianity had triumphed; but eight years
after that event Edwin, the Christian king of Deira, perished in battle,
and northern England was forced back by king Penda into paganism.
Southern England, with the exception of Canterbury and a considerable
part of Kent, had also lost the Gospel, after possessing it for thirty
years. Nearly at the same time East Anglia and Essex, at the command of
pagan-kings, had discarded it likewise. It was then that Oswald, on
recovering his kingdom of Northumbria, besought the Irish monks of Iona
to reconvert it, or rather to complete a conversion which had been but
begun. Their work prospered; by degrees the largest kingdom of the
Heptarchy became solidly and permanently Christian, its See being fixed
in the Island of Lindisfarne, whence the huge diocese of the north was
ruled successively by three of St. Columba's order, Aidan, Finan, and
Colman. But the labours of St. Columba's sons were not confined to the
north. In East Anglia an Irish monk, St. Fursey, founded on the coast of
Suffolk the monastery of Burghcastle, in which King Sigebert became a
monk. An Irish priest, Maidulphus, built that of Malmesbury in Wessex.
Glastonbury was an older Celtic monastery inhabited partly by Irish
monks, and partly by British. Peada, king of Mercia, son of the terrible
Penda, was baptized by St. Finan close to the Roman Wall, as was also
Sigebert, king of the East Saxons. Diama, an Irish monk, was first
bishop of all Mercia, its second, Ceolach, being Irish also, and also
its fourth.

Montalembert, in his _Moines d'Occident_, has given us the most
delightful history that exists of the conversion of Anglo-Saxon England,
a work combining the depth of a Christian philo