h the career of her greatest
scholars; I am merely describing the love of learning which is
characteristic of the race, and which it seems best to present in a
brief study of distinct types drawn from various periods of Irish
history.

In the pre-Christian period the Druid was the chief representative of
the learning of the race. He was the adviser of kings and princes,
and the instructor of their children. His knowledge was of the
recondite order and beyond the reach of ordinary persons. The esteem
in which he was held by all classes of the people proves their love
for the learning for which he stood.

Patrick came: and with him came a wider horizon of learning and
greater facilities for the acquisition and diffusion of knowledge.
Monastic schools sprang up in all directions--at Clonard, Armagh,
Clonmacnois, Bangor, Lismore, Kildare, Innisfallen. These schools
were celebrated throughout Europe in the earlier middle ages, and
from the fifth to the ninth century Ireland led the nations of Europe
in learning and deserved the title of the "Island of Saints and
Scholars." Our type is the student in one of these monastic schools.
He goes out from his parents and settles down to study in the
environs of the monastery. He is not rich; he resides in a hut; his
time is divided between study, prayer, and manual labor. He becomes a
monk, only to increase in devotion to learning and to accentuate his
privations. He copies and illuminates manuscripts. He memorizes the
Psalms. He glosses the Vulgate Scriptures with vernacular notes. He
receives ordination, and, realizing that there are benighted
countries ten times as large as his native land beyond the seas, and,
burning with zeal for the spread of the Gospel and the advancement of
learning, sails for Britain, or passes into Gaul, or reaches the
slopes of the Apennines, or the outskirts of the Black Forest. The
rest of his life is devoted to the foundation of monasteries to which
schools are attached, to the building of churches, and to the
diffusion around him of every known branch of knowledge. He may have
taken books from Ireland over seas, and, of these, relics are now to
be found among the treasures of the ancient libraries of Europe.
Columcille, Columbanus, Adamnan, Gall, Virgilius occur to the mind in
dwelling on this type.

The hereditary _seanchaidhe_, who treasured up the traditional lore
of the clan and its chief, was held in high honor and enjoyed
extraordinary priv