Page:Biographia Hibernica volume 1.djvu/497

Rh the kings, and other superior personages. Lewis, in his ancient History of Great Britain, mentions the remains of the tombs in the church-yard, of forty-eight kings of Scotland, four kings of Ireland, and eight kings of Norway.

St. Columba's manner of living was most austere; his fasting extraordinary, the bare floor his bed, and a stone his pillow; yet he was mild and cheerful, and his general benificence won him the hearts of all;—be considered time of so much value, that he suffered no minutes to pass without employment, and that employment of the best kind, promoting religion and virtue in his own person, and communicating the same by example and precept to all around him,—a rare example to the priesthood of all denominations. In the MS. life of St. Columba by O'Donnell, it is asserted that in the year 544, being a prince of the royal family, he was offered the crown of. Ireland, and that Dermod M'Cerball, his competitor, succeeded only because our holy abbot preferred the cowl to the diadem, an evident proof of the sincerity of his devotion, and the humility of his mind.

He died in the seventy-seventh year of his age, and was buried in the island, but was some ages after removed to Down, in Ulster, and laid in one vault with the remains of St. Patrick and St. Brigit.

It is justly observed by Butler, that formerly, christians hid themselves in solitudes, that they might more immediately devote themselves to the service of God; but now, after a christian education, too many pass their whole lives in dissipation and vanity, without being able to find leisure for serious meditation or reading, as if they made it their study to unlearn the chief thing which it concerns them to know, and to love the only thing for which they exist—religion, or the worship of God.  END OF VOL. I.