was altogether trivial: they had their own way of
shaving their heads for the tonsure, and their own times for
celebrating Easter,--though truly, these are the kind of things
over which you fight religious wars. However, it was not these
details that worried them so much; but an uneasy sense they
derived, perhaps, from the tone of Augustine's summons. The
story runs that they took counsel among themselves, and agreed
that if he were a man sent from God, they would find him
humble-minded and mannered; whereof the sign should be, that he
would rise to greet them when they entered. But Augustine had
other ideas; and as the ambassador of the Vicar of Christ, rose
to greet no man. So still, not quite knowing why, they would have
no dealings with him; and went their ways after refusing to
assimilate their Church of the Circled Cross to his of the Cross
Uncircled;--whereupon he, to teach them a sound lesson, impelled
the Saxon kings to war. Fair play to him, he was dead before
that war brought about the massacre of the monks of Bangor,--who
had marched to Chester to pray for the Briton arms.

But when Findian went back to Ireland he found no such difficulties
in his way. Not till two hundred and seventy-five years later
was that island disturbed by foreign invaders; and whatever
domestic Kilkenny Cattery might be going forward, the colleges
were respected. His school at Clonard quickly grew* till
its students numbered three thousand; and in the forties, he
sent out twelve of the chief of them to found other such schools
throughout the island. Then the great age began; and for the
next couple of thirteen-decade periods Ireland was a really
brilliant center of light and learning. Not by any means merely,
or even chiefly, in theology; there was a wonderful quickening
of mental energies, a real illumination. The age became, as we
have seen, a sort of literary clearing-house for the whole Irish
past. If the surviving known Gaelic manuscripts were printed,
they would fill nearly fifty thousand quarto volumes, with matter
that mostly comes from before the year 800,--and which is still
not only interesting, but fascinating.

------
* _Encyclopaedia Britannica,_ article 'Ireland'; whence all re
Findian and the colleges.
------

The truth is, we seem to have in it the relics and wreckage of
the literary output of a whole foregone manvantara, or perhaps
several. For in the vast mass of epics and romances that comes
d