THE ISLAND OF SAINTS.
Nature has been lavish in her gifts to this lovely island, once so famous as the nursing-school of the godly and learned. Though fallen from her high estate, though no longer the unrivalled land of science, she is still the
“Land of wild beauty and romantic shapes,
Of sheltered valleys and of stormy capes;
Of the bright garden and the tangled brake,
Of the dark mountain and the sunlit lake!”
Rugged, precipitous cliffs protect her coasts, while her shores are indented by the most magnificent bays and harbors. Her bosom is stored with precious metals, and the most fertile soil in the world crowns her granite base. Her very geographical position is an advantageous one, for she is placed, as it were, an advanced guard on the outskirts of Europe—she opens the route to the great Western world, and she offers the first eastern port to the American mariner.
“Moist, bright, and green, her landscape smiles around;” pellucid lakes reflect as in a mirror the hills, rocks, and precipices on their margins; here are undulating plains of unequalled
verdure; there, garden-like tracts where the myrtle, the rose, and the laurel need no culture; where the evergreen arbutus, in wonderful luxuriance of growth, appears to be indigenous; where every spot is enamelled with flowers and fragrant herbs.
Beautiful Ireland! most picturesque land on the face of the globe! Alas! why not also the richest and happiest?
Religion and learning early found a welcome home in this “emerald gem of the ocean.” Even in the dark days of paganism, the priest-and-poet Druid of Erin appears to have been superior in intelligence and culture to his brethren of England and of the Continent; and when Christianity was first preached in the land, no other people ever welcomed it with such ardent enthusiasm as did the Irish; no other people ever clung to their faith with such inviolable fidelity as Irish Catholics have since done.
During the five centuries that followed the apostolic labors of Saint Patrick, so great was the multitude of holy personages who trod in the
way which he traced out; so eminent the sanctity of their lives; so illustrious their learning, that Ireland received the proud title of “Island of Saints and Doctors.” The number of her churches was infinite, and her monasteries and convents were at once the abodes of piety and the sheltering homes of the poor and the stranger. Her theological schools and colleges were the most renowned of Europe. Their halls were open to the students of every clime, “who,” says Moreri, “were there received with greater hospitality than in any other country in the Christian world.” Hither, as to the “emporium of literature,” the youth of France, Germany, and Switzerland repaired in search of knowledge. But to the English nobility and gentry especially, the Venerable Bede tells us “Ireland showed the most cordial hospitality and generosity, for, great though their numbers, they were all most willingly received, maintained, supplied with books, and instructed without fee or reward.”