ut in some of the English on the 15th of December. Scottish writers, and calendars of the middle ages, mention St. Servanus, and St. Ternan as disciples of St. Palladius, and by him made bishops, the former of Orkney, the latter of the Picts. But from Ushers chronology it appears that they both lived later.
It is easy to conceive how painful and laborious the mission of this saint must have been; but where there is ardent love, labour seems a pleasure, and either is not felt or is a delight. It is a mark of sloth and impatience for a man to count his labours, or so much as to think of pains or sufferings in so glorious an undertaking. St. Palladius surmounted every obstacle which a fierce nation had opposed to the establishment of the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Ought not our hearts to be impressed with the most lively sentiments of love and gratitude to our merciful God, for having raised up such great and zealous men, by whose ministry the light of true faith has been conveyed to us.
Note 1. The Abbé Mac Geoghegan, in his History of Ireland, published in Paris in 1758, asserts that the Scots were originally Scythians, or properly Celto-Scythians, of Spanish original. Foreign writers of repute bear witness to this extraction; the native historians of Ireland have at all times been unanimous in recording it, and have adduced testimonies in support of it, which cannot be easily overthrown, as some moderns, who made the attempt, have experienced. The ancient Fileas of Ireland have indeed (like the old poets of all other European nations) shrouded real facts in a veil of pompous fables. Thus they pretended the leaders of this Spanish colony were the descendants of a celebrated Breogan, and that a grandson of this Breogan was married to an Egyptian heroine named Scota, from whom the Irish took the name of Kinea-Scuit or Scots, as they took the appellation of Clan-Breogan or Brigantes, from the former. But such inventions, acceptable to the credulity and flattering to the pride of nations, cannot discredit any fact otherwise well attested. The British Brigantes were probably descendants of the Irish Brigantes, as the Scots of Britain were certainly descended from those of Ireland. Tacitus, in the first age of the Christian era, has thought from the difference of complexion and frame of body observable among the British tribes of his time, that some were of Spanish original; and an earlier writer, Seneca, in his satire on the Emperor Claudius, makes mention of the Scuta-Brigantes, which Scaliger, by a needless correction, makes Scoto-Brigantes, as the Irish wrote Scuit and Scoit indifferently. This testimony of Seneca is a proof that the name Scots or Scuits, was known to some Roman writers so early as the first century; and the Irish appellations of Kinea-Scuit and Clan-Breogan plainly point out the proper country of those Scuta-Brigantes in the time of the Emperor Nero. Mac Geoghegan looks upon the Irish to be a mother tongue; and it may justly be so denominated, notwithstanding the adoption of some foreign terms, and some variations of construction introduced by time in all languages, before they arrive at their classical standard. Some writings of the fifth century show that this language was at its full perfection before the introduction of the gospel by Roman missionaries in the fourth and fifth centuries. The notion that this language is a dialect of the modern Biscayan is undoubtedly groundless. The latter tongue owes its original to some nation of those barbarians, who settled in Guipuscoa and other parts of the Pyrenean regions, on the decline of the Roman empire, nor are the few words common in the Basque and Irish tongues any proof that the one is descended from the other. This observation will hold good relatively to the Welch and Irish languages. They differ entirely in Syntax, and show that the two nations speaking those tongues have different Celtic originals. Bollandus says that St. Patrick taught the first alphabet to the Irish: he means the Roman alphabet, and should not forget that it was taught very near an a