Columba dwelt in a hut built of planks, and there up to an advanced age he slept upon the hard floor, with only a stone for a pillow. Thither he returned after performing his share of out-door labour with the other monks, and there he patiently transcribed the sacred text of Scripture. There he received the crowds of visitors who, attracted by the renown of his sanctity and virtues, flocked over from Ireland, from North and South Britain, and from the shores of the heathen Saxons. There, too, he blessed chieftains and ordained kings. According to Scottish national tradition, he consecrated Aïdan as King of the Caledonian Scots, upon a great stone called the Stone of Fate, which was afterwards carried to Scone Abbey, and from thence to Westminster by Edward I. He also crossed that central mountain range which separates the counties of Inverness and Argyll, and carried Christianity and civilisation among the hills and glens, the islands and mountains, of Northern Caledonia. In the frail skiffs of the period, Columba and his monks sailed from isle to isle in the Hebridean Archipelago. They even sought for solitude in the unknown northern seas, wishing, as Adamnan, the biographer of Columba, says, 'desertum in pelago intransmeabili invenire.' And thus they discovered St. Kilda, the Faröe islands, and even reached the distant Iceland. Thus the great Apostle of the Caledonians laboured for over thirty years, bearing to the Picts and Scots justice, truth, and light. The particulars of his last days and death have been preserved by Adamnan, and are as interesting as they are affecting, even at this remote period. After visiting and blessing the monastery, he bade farewell to an old and faithful servant-his white horse. He entered his cell, and began the work of transcribing the Scriptures for the last time. When he had come to the thirty-third Psalm and the verse, 'Inquirentes autem Dominum non deficient omni bono,' he stopped, and said, 'Baithen will write the rest.' On the next morning he rose, and hastened before the other monks to the church, and knelt before the altar. There he died peacefully, blessing all his disciples, on the 9th June, 597.

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"Such, according to the records and fables recounted by the Duke of Argyll, were the life and labours of Columba, saint and poet, whose posthumous glory was greater than the glory of his life, and whose miracles and virtues have caused the little island of Iona, to be revered and visited by pilgrims from many distant lands." So far the Examiner. To us," says Montalembert, “looking back, he appears a personage as singular as he is loveable, in whom, through all the mists of the past, and all the cross-lights of legend, the man may still be recognised under the saint-a man capable and worthy of the supreme honour of holiness, since he knew how to subdue his inclinations, his weakness, his instincts, and his passions, and to transform them into docile and invincible weapons for the salvation of souls and the glory of God." For two centuries after his death Iona was the most venerated sanctuary of the Celts, the nursery of bishops, and the centre of learning and religious knowledge. Seventy kings or princes were brought to Iona (or I-Colm-Kill, as it was also called) to be buried at the feet of Columba, faithful to a traditional custom, the remembrance of which has been preserved by Shakespeare. "Where is Duncan's body ?"

asks Rosse in "Macbeth." Macduff replies,

"Carried to Colmes-Kill,

The sacred storehouse of his predecessors,
And guardian of their bones.'”

So St. Columba, historians tell us, came to Scotland from Ireland in 565. Having converted to Christianity the Northern Picts, with Bridius their king, he received a grant of the island of Hy or Iona. Ritson, in his Annals of the Caledonians, says that "the real benefactor of the holy man was Conal MacCongail, King of the Scots."

In the introduction of the Monasticon Hibernicum, it is stated that "The order of Columba was one of the most extensive, for it had above an hundred monasteries and abbeys belonging to it, in all the British Islands. The principal house, or head of the order, was, according to some, at Armagh ; according to others at Derry, now Londonderry;

and according to the most received opinion in the island of Hii, Hij, or Iona, which was afterwards called Colomb Kill, situated to the northward of Ireland, at a small distance from Scotland; that saint having preached the gospel to the Picts, converted great numbers of them, and built churches. He was so much honoured as apostle of that country, that in the time of Bede, viz., about the year 731, by a very extraordinary sort of discipline, all the bishops of the province of the Picts were subject to the jurisdiction of the priest that was abbot of Colomb Kill, because St. Colomb, the apostle of the nation, had been only a priest and religious man."

St. Columba died in 597, and was succeeded by St. Barthen, alias Comin, who died in 601.

Bede records that when St. Aidan went from Iona to preach to the Northumbrians in 634, Segerius was the fourth abbot from St. Columba.

St. Adamnan, sixth abbot, adopted the Roman time of celebrating Easter. In his life of St. Columba, he tells us that the aged priest, being now very infirm, ascended a little hill, shortly before his death, which overlooked the monastery, and standing on its summit he lifted up his hands to Heaven, and blessed his long adopted home, pronouncing the following prophecy on its future fame: “Unto this place, though small and poor, great homage shall yet be paid, not only by the kings and people of the Scots, but by the rulers of barbarous and distant nations, with their people also. In great veneration, too, shall it be held by the holy men of other churches."

In bidding farewell to Iona, on return from our pilgrimage, our very heart sunk within us, that no altar was there for the Eucharistic sacrifice-that no sacraments were administered-that no rite of Christian burial could be employed that the poor people, from the cradle to the grave, were living without the graces, and dying without the blessings of true religion! No wonder that we should have exclaimed:-" How long, Gracious and Just, how long?"

"IONA," BY THE DUKE OF ARGYLL.

WE had glanced over three papers, which appeared in successive numbers of that anti-Catholic monthly, miscalled Good Words-and which is edited by Rev. Dr. Norman Macleod. We have said before that this periodical bears a misnomer. "Good words" ought to be true words: as a rule the words written in this publication in reference to the old religion of Christendom are not true, and therefore are not good, as we have had occasion to show. These papers, now reprinted, have been furnished by the Duke of Argyll, who, apart from his territorial designation, and his son's royal alliance, is well known in the world of politics and letters. They were reprinted in a neat volume in last December, which in this month of February has been reproduced. They no doubt are ably written, and smell of the lamp; but there is a certain parade of historical reading foisted into the narrative which strikes us as quite irrelevant, while there is also a certain smack of bumptiousness-if we be pardoned the significant term-in laying down the Presbyterian law, and rushing full tilt against the Catholic code, that reveals no small amount of intellectual self-sufficiency. For the pride of intellect-instance Lord Brougham and Lord Macaulay, not to speak of so many living examples-so antagonistic to the humility of the gospel, is the besetting sin of the present day, and lays hold of the peer as well as the peasant. For every unfledged scribe who can flourish his quill, must needs write dogmatically on men and manners-on philology, philosophy, and religion-and must record his crude pronouncement through press, with all the assurance of the Delphic oracle. We

the

do not say all this in reference to the present work, but rather in regard to the penny-a-liners of the day; for while there has been a great clamour against the real infallibility of the Pope, there has been none against the assumed infallibility of the Press! But let us, without further preamble, proceed to our review.

At the outset his Grace of Argyll introduces his readers to Staffa as well as Iona. He very truly says: "No two objects of interest could be more absolutely dissimilar in kind than the neighbouring islands-Staffa and Iona— Iona dear to Christendom for more than a thousand years; Staffa known to the scientific and the curious only since the close of the last century. Nothing but an accident of geography could unite their names. The number of those who can thoroughly understand and enjoy them both is probably very small. There can be no doubt which is the more popular of the two. The aspects of nature will always be more generally attractive than the history of them. It requires no previous knowledge, and no preparation of the memory, or of the imagination, to be impressed by Fingal's Cave-with Iona it is very different. Its interest lies altogether in human memories." Now this is perfectly correct, and very well put. Staffa, with its caverns, and cliffs, and stupendous hall of columns, stands out in proud relief contrasted with the modest and unobtrusive little island of Iona. The one, so to speak, with its native boldness, is emphatically the handwork of God; the other, under God, with its religious associations, is the handwork of man. The sanctity of Columba has thrown the sweet odour of Catholicity around the isle of Iona, and the apostolicity of Columba has diffused its aroma throughout Northern Anglia and ancient Caledonia. Time, which swallows up in its vortex the greatest actions of men, seems to have cast an additional halo of glory around the memories of St. Columba and his holy monks. The celebrated Count de Montalembert, in company with his friend the Earl of Dunraven, lately visited, like ourselves, this sacred and historic isle, and in his most elaborate work-"The Monks of the West"-has