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CHAPTER II
LINEAMENTS IN THE CONSPECTUS
I. Founders of Churches and Cities. 2. From Iceland to the Pyramids.
3. Incomparably Skilled in Human Learning.' 4. The Carolingian
Renaissance.
THE
r. FOUNDERS OF CHURCHES AND CITIES
men that Ireland sent forth therefore were more
than intellectuals and devotees. Had they been
merely such they could not have got very far.
They were indefatigable all-round workers engineers,
architects, painters, penmen, woodcarvers and farmers, as
well as the most accomplished schoolmen of their age.
Deeply learned and highly bred, some of them the sons
of kings, and, like Columcille, eligible to the high throne
of Ireland itself, giving their wealth as well as their work,
they regarded no form of labor as too lowly or arduous
that helped in the compassing of the ends they had in
view. A versatility in cases verging on the miraculous,
a faith and enthusiasm that removed mountains, and a
courage lionlike in its intrepidity, would seem to have
been the elements necessary for the accomplishment of
the deeds recorded of them. Here and there all over
Europe, on high tablelands or by the side of rivers, or in
the midst of a desert waste, there rise to-day fair cities
boasting large populations and all the refinements of
civilization. How came these cities there? Often because
one of these Irish peregrini, trusting only God
and his own arm and brain, struck out on a fateful and
distant day into the trackless forest or across some wilder-
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