students of whom we speak. Many of them, whether as
teachers or learners, or combining both characters
together, reached middle life before they ventured as
instructors upon the world. Forty years is no uncommon
age for the graduate of those days, when as yet the
discovery was unmade, that all-sufficient wisdom comes
with the first trace of down upon the chin of youth.

The range of studies seems to have included the greater
part of the collegiate course of our own times. The
language of the country, and the language of the Roman
Church; the languages of Scripture--Greek and Hebrew;
the logic of Aristotle, the writings of the Fathers,
especially of Pope Gregory the Great--who appears to have
been a favourite author with the Irish Church; the
defective Physics of the period; Mathematics, Music, and
Poetical composition went to complete the largest course.
When we remember that all the books were manuscripts;
that even paper had not yet been invented; that the best
parchment was equal to so much beaten gold, and a perfect
MS. was worth a king's ransom, we may better estimate
the difficulties in the way of the scholar of the seventh
century. Knowing these facts, we can very well credit
that part of the story of St. Columbkill's banishment
into Argyle, which turns on what might be called a
copyright dispute, in which the monarch took the side of
St. Finian of Clonard, (whose original MSS. his pupil
seems to have copied without permission,) and the Clan-Conal
stood up, of course, for their kinsman. This dispute is
even said to have led to the affair of Culdrum, in Sligo,