218 



SECTION IV. 



Sciences, Learning, and Learned Men. 



G RATIFY! I? G as it shoiild be to an Irishman, to find his country 

 maintaining at this period such a pre-eminence in her foreign relations, 

 as the last se<?tion has exhibited, it is a still more splendid enjoyment 

 to contemplate her in the pride of her home, surrounded with Chris- 

 tian charities, ^.d basking in the revelation of science. When the 

 rest of Europe was,, aa Doctor Campbell expresses it, " canopied in 

 ignorance ;" whep the Roman Empire was crumbling into ruin, and 

 darkness hung over its pagan tributaries, the children of Ireland 

 alone "had light in their dwellings." Their country was, as Aldhelm 

 is obliged to describe it, in that letter of jealous sarcasm which Usher 

 has preserved in the " Sylloge," a country rich in the wealth of science, 

 and as thickly set with learned men as the poles are with stars.* 

 She was the asylum of religion, the storehouse of learning, the guide 

 of youth. -f- Like the pelican of the east, she gathered her aliment in 

 the desert, and opened her bosom to the young. 



With Christianity Saint Patrick naturally introduced the know- 

 ledge and alphabet of the Latin language,.^ doubtless from the wish 



* " Rus discentium opulans vemansque, •***»»* pascuosa numerositate 

 lectorum, quemadmodum poli cardines astriferis miscantium ornentur vibraminibus side- 

 nun."— Sylloge, p. 26, &c. 



f " Erat vero Hibemia totius tunc scientiae promptuarium et alumna." — Rossius, Hist. 

 Reg. Angl. p. 67. — Innes himself admits it, vol. 2. p. 404. 



X " S. Patricius scripsit abietoria 365, et eo amplius numero." — Nennius, Hist. Britt. 



