the Dalraida and Southern Picts. They could not, therefore, have been
described in the year 388, when St. Patrick was made captive, as
Christians who had ceased to practise their religion. "I knew not the
real God," writes St. Patrick, "and I was brought captive to Ireland
with many thousand men, as we deserved, for we had forgotten God and
had not kept His Commandments, and were disobedient to our priests, who
admonished us for our salvation. And the Lord brought down upon us the
anger of His Spirit, and scattered us amongst many nations, even to the
ends of the earth, where now my humble self may be witnessed among
strangers" ("Confession").



ST. PATRICK MADE CAPTIVE BY NIALL OF THE NINE HOSTAGES.

GIBBON narrates that about the middle of the fourth century the "sea
coast of Gaul and Britain were exposed to the depredations of the
Saxons" (vol. i., P- 739); and Bertrand, in his "History of Boulogne,"
admits that the city was plundered by the Saxons in the year 371, but
that the invaders spared Caligula's tower and lighthouse on account of
its usefulness for their safe navigation. The silence of local history
concerning two raids made by the Irish Scots into Armorica in the years
388 and 402 is not surprising, seeing that French writers admit that
there is practically no history of Armorica or more than a century
after the Saxon raid in the year 371. Gibbon, however, in his history
of the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," narrates that "the
hostile tribes of the North, who detested the pride and power of the
King of the World, suspended their domestic feuds, and the barbarians
of the land and sea, the Picts, the Scots, and the Saxons, spread
themselves with rapid and irresistible fury from the walls of Antoninus