His name alone was sufficient to heal all diseases; to
raise the very dead to life. Such, we learn from the
old biographers, was the line of Patrick's argument. This
sermon ushered in a controversy. The king's guests, who
had come to feast and rejoice, remained to listen and to
meditate. With the impetuosity of the national character
--with all its passion for debate--they rushed into this
new conflict, some on one side, some on the other. The
daughters of the king and many others--the Arch-Druid
himself--became convinced and were baptized. The
missionaries obtained powerful protectors, and the king
assigned to Patrick the pleasant fort of Trim, as a
present residence. From that convenient distance, he
could readily return at any moment, to converse with the
king's guests and the members of his household.

The Druidical superstition never recovered the blow it
received that day at Tara. The conversion of the Arch-Druid
and the Princesses, was, of itself, their knell of doom.
Yet they held their ground during the remainder of this
reign--twenty-five years longer (A.D. 458). The king
himself never became a Christian, though he tolerated
the missionaries, and deferred more and more every year
to the Christian party. He sanctioned an expurgated code
of the laws, prepared under the direction of Patrick,
from which every positive element of Paganism was rigidly
excluded. He saw, unopposed, the chief idol of his race,
overthrown on "the Plain of Prostration," at Sletty. Yet
withal he never consented to be baptized; and only two
years before his decease, we find him swearing to a