o make themselves what they were: and as we said, in this part
of the business there is unquestionable basis of truth--scarcely even
exaggeration. We have documentary evidence, which has been filtered
through the sharp ordeal of party hatred, of the way in which some men
(and those, not mere ignorant fanatics, but men of vast mind and vast
influence in their days) conducted themselves, where _myth_ has no room
to enter. We know something of the hair-shirt of Thomas a Becket; and
there was another poor monk, whose asceticism imagination could not
easily outrun; he who, when the earth's mighty ones were banded together
to crush him under their armed heels, spoke but one little word, and it
fell among them like the spear of Cadmus; the strong ones turned their
hands against each other, and the armies melted away; and the proudest
monarch of the earth lay at that monk's threshold three winter nights in
the scanty clothing of penance, suing miserably for forgiveness. Or
again, to take a fairer figure. There is a poem extant, the genuineness
of which, we believe, has not been challenged, composed by Columbkill,
commonly called St. Columba. He was a hermit in Arran, a rocky island in
the Atlantic, outside Galway Bay; from which he was summoned, we do not
know how, but in a manner which appeared to him to be a Divine call, to
go away and be Bishop of Iona. The poem is a 'Farewell to Arran,' which
he wrote on leaving it; and he lets us see something of a hermit's life
there. 'Farewell,' he begins (we are obliged to quote from memory), 'a
long farewell to thee, Arran of my heart. Paradise is with thee; the
garden of God within the sound of thy bells. The angels love Arran. Each
day an angel comes there to join in its services.' And then he goes on
to describe his 'dear cell,' and the holy happy hours which he had spent
there, 'with the wind whistling through the loose stones, and the sea
spray hanging on his hair.' Arran is no better than a wild rock. It is
strewed over with the ruins which may still be seen of the old
hermitages; and at their best they could have been but such places as
sheep would huddle under in a storm, and shiver in the cold and wet
which would pierce through the chinks of the walls.

Or, if written evidence be too untrustworthy, there are silent witnesses
which cannot lie, that tell the same touching story. Whoever loiters
among the ruins of a monastery will see, commonly leading out of the
cloisters, rows o