in the south; to Switzerland and Austria, where one Irishman gave
his name to the Canton of St. Gall, while another founded the famous see
of Salzburg, a rallying-point through all the Middle Ages. It was not
only for pure spiritual zeal and high inspiration that these teachers
were famed. They had not less renown for all refined learning and
culture. The famous universities of Oxford, Paris and Pavia count among
the great spirits at their inception men who were worthy pupils of the
schools of Devenish and Durrow, of Bangor and Moville.

We have recorded the tribute paid by Alfred the Saxon king to the
Ireland of his day. Let us add to it the testimony of a great divine of
France. Elias, Bishop of Angouleme, who died in 875, wrote thus: "What
need to speak of Ireland; setting at nought, as it does, the
difficulties of the sea, and coming almost in a body to our shores, with
its crowd of philosophers, the most intelligent of whom are subjecting
themselves to a voluntary exile."

We have traced the raids of the Northmen for nearly a century. They
continued for a century and a quarter longer. Through all this time the
course of the nation's life was as we have described it: a raid from the
sea, or from one of their seaboard fortresses by the Dark Gentiles or
the Fair; an assembling of the hosts of the native chieftains against
them; a fierce and spirited battle against the pirates in their
mail-coats and armed with great battle-axes. Sometimes the chosen people
prevailed, and sometimes the Gentiles; but in either case the heads of
the slain were heaped up at the feet of the victor, many cattle were
driven away as spoil, and young men and maidens were taken into
captivity. It would seem that at no time was there any union between the
foreigners of one and another seaboard fortress, any more than there was
unity among the tribes whom they raided and who defeated them in their
turn. It was a strife of warring units, without fusion; small groups
round chosen leaders, and these merging for awhile in greater groups.
Thus the life of the times, in its warlike aspect. Its spiritual vigor
we have sufficiently shown, not less in the inspirations of the saints
than in the fiery songs of the bards, called forth by battles and the
death of kings. Everywhere there was fierce force and seething energy,
bringing forth fruit of piety or prowess.

The raiders slowly lost their grasp of the fortresses they had seized.
Newcomers ceased to