mself last
summer a villa on the Rappahannock, or retired for private meditation to
the orchard of Hougoumont during the battle of Waterloo.

Nevertheless, there Severinus stayed till men began to appreciate him;
and called him, and not unjustly, Saint. Why not? He preached, he
taught, he succoured, he advised, he fed, he governed; he turned aside
the raids of the wild German kings; he gained a divine power over their
hearts; he taught them something of God and of Christ, something of
justice and mercy; something of peace and unity among themselves; till
the fame ran through all the Alps, and far away into the Hungarian
marches, that there was a prophet of God arisen in the land; and before
the unarmed man, fasting and praying in his solitary cell on the mountain
above Vienna, ten thousand knights and champions trembled, who never had
trembled at the sight of armed hosts.

Who would deny that man the name of saint? And who, if by that sagacity
which comes from the combination of intellect and virtue, he sometimes
seemed miraculously to foretell coming events, would deny him the name of
prophet also?

If St. Severinus be the type of the monk as prophet, St. Columba may
stand as the type of the missionary monk; the good man strengthened by
lonely meditation; but using that strength not for selfish fanaticism,
but for the good of men; going forth unwillingly out of his beloved
solitude, that he may save souls. Round him, too, cluster the usual
myths. He drives away with the sign of the cross a monster which attacks
him at a ford. He expels from a fountain the devils who smote with palsy
and madness all who bathed therein. He sees by a prophetic spirit, he
sitting in his cell in Ireland, a great Italian town destroyed by a
volcano. His friends behold a column of light rising from his head as he
celebrates mass. Yes; but they also tell of him, 'that he was angelical
in look, brilliant in speech, holy in work, clear in intellect, great in
council.' That he 'never passed an hour without prayer, or a holy deed,
or reading of the Scriptures (for these old monks had Bibles, and knew
them by heart too, in spite of all that has been written to the
contrary), that he was of so excellent a humility and charity, bathing
his disciples' feet when they came home from labour, and carrying corn
from the mill on his own back, that he fulfilled the precept of his
Master, 'He that will be the greatest among you, let him be as your