which bear his name, his
presence seems as real and tangible to us as that of Tasso at Ferrara or
Petrarch at Avignon. In spite of that thick--one is inclined to say
rank--growth of miracles which at times confuse Adamnan's fine portrait
of his hero--cover it thick as lichens some monumental slab of
marble--we can still recognize his real lineaments underneath. His great
natural gifts; his abounding energy; his characteristically Irish love
for his native soil; for the beloved "oaks of Derry." We see him in his
goings out and his comings in; we know his faults; his fiery Celtic
temper, swift to wrath, swift to forgive when the moment of anger is
over. Above all, we feel the charm of his abounding humanity. Like
Sterne's Uncle Toby there seems to have been something about St. Columba
which "eternally beckoned to the unfortunate to come and take shelter
under him," and no one apparently ever refused to respond to
that appeal.

One thing it is important hereto have clearly before the mind, as it is
very apt to be overlooked. At the time of St. Columba's ministry,
England, which during the lifetime of St. Patrick had been Roman and
Christian, had now under the iron flail of its Saxon conquerors lapsed
back into Paganism. Ireland, therefore, which for a while had made a
part of Christendom, had been broken short off by the heathen conquest
of Britain. It was now a small, isolated fragment of Christendom, with a
great mass of heathenism between. We can easily imagine what a stimulus
to all the eager enthusiasts of the Faith the consciousness of this
neighbourhood must have been; how keen the desire to rush to the assault
and to replace the Cross where it had been before.

That assault was not, however, begun by Ireland; it was begun, as every
one knows, by St. Augustine, a Roman priest, sent by Pope Gregory, who
landed at Ebbsfleet, in the Isle of Thanet, in the year 597--thirty-two
years after St. Columba left Ireland. If the South of England owes its
conversion to Rome, Northern England owes its conversion to Ireland,
through the Irish colony at Iona. Oswald, the king of Northumbria, had
himself taken refuge in Iona in his youth, and when summoned to reign he
at once called in the Irish missionaries, acting himself, we are told,
as their interpreter. His whole reign was one continuous struggle with
heathenism, and although at his death it triumphed for a time, in the
end the faith and energies of the missionaries carried