scattered places throughout the wide dominions of Charlemagne, the
students came; were kept, as Bede expressly tells us, free of cost in
the Irish monasteries, and drew their first inspirations in the Irish
schools. Even now, after the lapse of all these centuries, many of the
places whence they came still reverberate faintly with the memory of
that time.

Before plunging into that weltering tangle of confusion which makes up
what we call Irish history, one may be forgiven for lingering a little
at this point, even at the risk of some slight over-balance of
proportion. With so dark a road before us, it seems good to remember
that the energies of Irishmen were not, as seems sometimes to be
concluded, always and of necessity directed to injuring themselves or
tormenting their rulers! Neither was this period by any means a short
one. It was no mere "flash in the pan;" no "small pot soon hot"
enthusiasm, but a steady flame which burned undimmed for centuries.
"During the seventh and eighth centuries, and part of the ninth," says
Mr. Goldwin Smith, not certainly a prejudiced writer, "Ireland played a
really great part in European history." "The new religious houses," says
Mr. Green in his Short History, "looked for their ecclesiastical
traditions, not to Rome, but to Ireland, and quoted for their guidance
the instructions not of Gregory, but of Columba." "For a time," he adds,
"it seemed as if the course of the world's history was to be changed, as
if that older Celtic race which the Roman and German had swept before
them, had turned to the moral conquest of their conquerors, as if Celtic
and not Latin Christianity was to mould the destinies of the Church of
the West."