the same way, and profiting by his Christian instructions and having been by these two prelates admitted to the holy orders of deacon and priest, he travelled (by the advice, it appears, of St. Germanus) to the south of France, and taking up his abode in the island of Lerins in the Tuscan Sea, remained there for some time with the monks of a celebrated collegiate institution in that place, prosecuting his studies, and growing, as we may well suppose, in piety and Christian experience.

It is uncertain by whom St. Patrick was ordained a bishop: some Roman Catholic historians, to be sure, would have us to believe that Pope Celestine appointed him to that holy office, and sent him with a commission from himself to preach to the Irish. One of the best, however, of those historians, Dr. Lanigan, admits that it cannot be certainly told what bishop consecrated the saint to the episcopal office; yet he is of opinion that he came here with the authority and sanction of Pope Celestine, somehow or other; "he ought to have done so, therefore, he must have done it," seems the chief argument for this notion. But had such been the case, Prosper, the intimate friend of

Celestine, would surely have mentioned it in his Chronicle, published several years after, as he did the trifling attempt of Palladius; he does not, however, once make mention of St. Patrick's name, but is altogether silent concerning him.

And so is Platina, a very valuable and wellinformed author, of the Roman Church, who wrote the Lives of the Popes, down to Sixtus IV., A.D. 1471. He tells of Palladius, but has not a word about St. Patrick in his Life of Pope Celestine : none could have had more free access than he had to documents connected with the history of the Roman Church, and surely if he could have found any that would have proved Celestine to have been the author of so great a work as the conversion of Ireland, he would not have failed to mention it.

Archbishop Ussher was indeed of opinion that St. Patrick had a commission from Rome; but since the days of this eminently learned man, the question has been further sifted, and the additional light thus thrown upon it, has tended to make it appear highly probable, or almost certain, that St. Patrick never was at Rome, and that he never received from Rome any commission whatsoever.*

* Case of the Church of Ireland stated by Declar. (M Phelan.)

A very ancient manuscript, preserved in England, in the Cotton Library, which Dr. O'Conor considers to have been written in the ninth century, (and Ussher and other learned men supposed to be some centuries older still,) mentions that the "Bishops Germanus and Lupus nurtured him in sacred literature, and ordained him and made him the chief bishop of their school among the British and Irish." This some would take for a sufficient evidence that it was from Germanus and Lupus that St. Patrick received the episcopal office; but there is no use in asserting strongly what cannot be demonstrated forcibly, nor depended on as unquestionably true; and it becomes us rather to speak modestly of things which have puzzled the most learned inquirers into these matters. Since then they have been unable satisfactorily to settle the question, and since it is after all of little moment, we need not here dwell on it, but content ourselves with this general conclusion, that it appears in a very high degree of probability that St. Patrick never was in Rome, nor received from Rome any suggestion of his undertaking, but was appointed and consecrated a bishop for the Irish

mission by some bishop or bishops of the Church of France.

§ 5.-ST. PATRICK'S MISSIONARY LABOURS AND

DEATH.

Patrick had returned from slavery in Ireland in his twenty-third year: it was not until very long after that he fulfilled his desire of coming as a missionary to preach the Gospel to our countrymen ; for he is said to have been advanced in years when he commenced his labours here, some accounts making him sixty years old at that period of his life, and stating that he lived for sixty years more working here in the ministry; while others again make his age forty-five at the beginning of his mission, and seventy-eight at the time of his death; leaving thus thirty-three years to be spent in his Irish labours but this is one of those particulars concerning which, amid the variety of differing opinions, I shall not take on me to say anything for certain. It does not appear whether his delaying so long as he did to revisit this country, arose

from his considering so long a course of preparation necessary, or from his ardour for the project having relaxed, and returning afterwards with fresh vigour.

In A.D. 432, as has been already observed, St. Patrick came to preach to the Irish; bringing with him, as we are told, many companions, whose piety and learning made them useful assistants in his work. He first landed in some part of Leinster; (in Wicklow, according to some writers ;) but meeting here with much opposition from the enmity of the Pagans, considered it best to withdraw for a time from that part of the island, and turn his attention to some other quarter. And, therefore, having embarked again in the same vessel which brought him to Ireland, he came by sea to the northern province where he had formerly been a captive; and landed again in the county of Down, (in the bay of Dundrum ?) where he began to preach with great success, and gained numerous converts to the faith which he propagated. One of the first of these was Dichu, prince of the territory where he landed who after his conversion showed his zeal for the Christian cause, by taking care to have a church