s date for the passing of
Arthur. By the time Camlan had been fought, and the Crest-Wave
had left Wales, Findian had made a channel through which it
might flow into Ireland, and in the five-forties the Irish
illumination began.

We must say a word or two as to the kind of institution he
founded. There were several of them in Wales,--to be called
colleges, or even universities, as rightly as monasteries:--one
at Bangor in the north; two or three in Glamorgan; one at Saint
Davids. Students flocked to them by the thousands; there was
strict discipline, the ascetic life,--and also serious study,
religious and secular. It was all beautifully simple: each
student lived in his own hut,

"of clay and wattles made,"

--or, where stone might be plentiful, as it is in most parts of
Wales, of stone. Like a military camp, the whole place would be
surrounded with fosse and vallum. They grew their own corn and
vegetables, milked their own cows, fished in the streams, and
supported themselves. The sky roofed their lecture-halls; of
which the walls, if there were any, were the trees and the
mountains. But these places were real centers of learning, the
best there were in Europe in those days; and you needed not to
be a monk to attend them.

In Wales the strain of the Saxon wars kept them from their full
fruition. Celtic warfare was governed by a certain code: thus,
you, went to war only at such and such a time of the year;
invaded your neighbor's territory only through such and such a
stretch of his frontier; and no one need trouble to guard more
than the recognized doorway of his realm. Above all, you never
took an army through church lands. So through all the wars the
Britons might be waging among themselves to keep their hands in,
the monastery-colleges remained islands of peace, on friendly
terms with all the combatants. But Wales, with no natural
frontier, lay very open to invaders who knew no respect for
religion or learning. Twelve hundred of the student-monks of
Bangor, for example, were slaughtered in 613 by the Saxon
Ethelfrith;--whereafter the rest fled to Bardsey Island in
Cardigan Bay, and the great college at Bangor ceased to be.

Augustine of Canterbury, sent by the Pope to convert the English,
had summoned the Welsh bishops to a conference, and ordered them
to come under his sway and conform to Rome. They hardly knew
why, but disliked the idea. Outwardly, their divergence from
Catholicism