ard Ossian, and his
dialogues with the apostle, all this has been excellently rendered into
verse by Mr. Aubrey de Vere, whose "Legends of St. Patrick" seem to the
present writer by no means so well known as they ought to be. The second
poem in the series, "The Disbelief of Milcho," especially is one of
great beauty, full of wild poetic gleams, and touches which breathe the
very breath of an Irish landscape. Poetry is indeed the medium best
suited for the Patrician history. The whole tale of the saint's
achievements in Ireland is one of those in which history seems to lose
its own sober colouring, to become luminous and half magical, to take on
all the rosy hues of a myth.

The best proof of the effect of the new revelation is to be found in
that extraordinary burst of enthusiasm which marked the next few
centuries. The passion for conversion, for missionary labour of all
sorts, seems to have swept like a torrent over the island, arousing to
its best and highest point that Celtic enthusiasm and which has never,
unhappily, found such noble exercise since. Irish missionaries flung
themselves upon the dogged might of heathenism, and grappled with it in
a death struggle. Amongst the Picts of the Highlands, amongst the fierce
Friscians of the Northern seas, beside the Lake of Constance, where the
church of St. Gall still preserves the name of another Irish saint, in
the Black Forest, at Schaffhausen, at Wuertzburg, throughout, in fact,
all Germany and North Italy, they were ubiquitous. Wherever they went
their own red-hot fervour seems to have melted every obstacle; wherever
they went victory seems to have crowned their zeal[3].

[3] For an account of Irish missionaries in Germany, see Mr.
Baring-Gould's "Germany," in this series, p. 46.

Discounting as much as you choose everything that seems to partake of
pious exaggeration, there can be no doubt that the period which followed
the Christianizing of Ireland was one of those shining epochs of
spiritual and also to a great degree intellectual enthusiasm rare indeed
in the history of the world. Men's hearts, lull of newly--won fervour,
burned to hand on the torch in their turn to others. They went out by
thousands, and they beckoned in their converts by tens of thousands.
Irish hospitality--a quality which has happily escaped the tooth of
criticism--broke out then with a vengeance, and extended its hands to
half a continent. From Gaul, from Britain, from Germany, from dozens