finding its way through the fields, if they could be called fields--a
little grass and some hazel-bushes growing here and there between the
rocks. Under a rocky headland, lying within embaying shores, was Church
Island, some seven or eight acres, a handsome wooded island, the largest
in the lake, with the ruins of a church hidden among the tall trees,
only an arch of it remaining, but the paved path leading from the church
to the hermit's cell could be followed. The hermit who used this paved
path fourteen hundred years ago was a poet; and Father Oliver knew that
Marban loved 'the shieling that no one knew save his God, the ash-tree
on the hither side, the hazel-bush beyond it, its lintel of honeysuckle,
the wood shedding its mast upon fat swine;' and on this sweet day he
found it pleasanter to think of Ireland's hermits than of Ireland's
savage chieftains always at war, striving against each other along the
shores of this lake, and from island to island.

His thoughts lingered in the seventh and eighth centuries, when the arts
were fostered in monasteries--the arts of gold-work and illuminated
missals--'Ireland's halcyon days,' he said; a deep peace brooded, and
under the guidance of the monks Ireland was the centre of learning when
England was in barbarism. The first renaissance was the Irish, centuries
before a gleam showed in Italy or in France. But in the middle of the
eighth century the Danes arrived to pillage the country, and no sooner
were they driven out than the English came to continue the work of
destruction, and never since has it ceased.' Father Oliver fell to
thinking if God were reserving the bright destiny for Ireland which he
withheld a thousand years ago, and looked out for the abbey that
Roderick, King of Connaught, built in the twelfth century.

It stood on a knoll, and in the distance, almost hidden in bulrushes,
was the last arm of the lake. 'How admirable! how admirable!' he said.