Of one then who lived in such an age, what records can we have? May not the history be given up as entirely uncertain? I conceive not; and for these reasons. Personal history is preserved when public events are unrecorded and forgotten. Nay, in all history it is often through the narratives of the lives of individuals alone, that many circumstances of public importance have been preserved to us; it is round the individual that interest centres, and his doings which are remembered. We know how children are impressed by the words and deeds of individual worthies, when of the general course of the history they have no clear ideas, so that the best histories for them consist of a series of personal tales. And it is so with men generally, and particularly in a simple state of society. Among Christians this is still more the case; since with them the affectionate remembrance of those who are gone, is heightened by religious reverence, and sanctioned and sustained by the commemoration of the departed. It is to the individual Saint that Christians look, rather than to the events of general history; for they view him as the work of Divine grace; whilst the course of the world, though in its progress and issue, the effect of His providence, is in detail but the manifestation of man's wilfulness and misery.

We cannot suppose but that the Picts, among whom St. Ninian had introduced the Gospel, would retain the memory of one to whom they were indebted for all they held dear. And in Galloway he had left a standing memorial in the church of stone, which was looked on with no little interest by the admiring Britons, and was thought to give a name to the place where it stood. He left a monastery too, and that

would be the means of preserving some records of him. That such records were preserved we know, on the authority of the earliest witnesses we could have-the most learned and accomplished scholars, and the most holy men of their age-Bede and Alcuin.

In Bede's time the Southern Picts were still existing as a separate race, and testified to having derived their Christianity from St. Ninian; and Whithern, with his church and tomb, was a visible memorial. A Saxon succession of Bishops and a Saxon monastery had been established here, on the conquest of Galloway by that people. So that in Bede we have the testimony of one who had full means of informing himself on the subject, as to the main incidents of St. Ninian's life; as also had Alcuin, of whom there is a letter still extant, written to the Brethren of the Saxon Monastery of Whithern, recognizing the miracles and holiness of the Saint. And after this we find incidental mention of St. Ninian in different writers, all treating the chief facts of his life as matter of authentic history.

These are however only portions of information incidentally given, indications of a larger store existing among the people whom he had converted, and where his Church and monastery were. Among them we might expect that records would exist, (as among the other Celtic tribes in Wales and Ireland,) written in their own language, and from that very circumstance little known to the rest of the world. Galloway had been over-run by different tribes, but (with the exception of the brief occupation by the Saxons) they were all of the Celtic race, and their languages, though different dialects, were mutually intelligible. And we know that in the twelfth century lives of the Saint were extant in their language.

This we learn from the testimony of St. Aelred of Rievaux, who was requested by the brethren of the convent of Whithern to compose a life of their Patron Saint in Latin. In an Introduction addressed to them, he speaks of the disadvantage arising from the life of the Saint only existing in a barbarous language, (or being written in a barbarous style) which obscured his history, and interfered with the pleasure and edification of the readers. It seems to be implied that more than one life was extant in Celtic, and perhaps in Latin, but that very rude and barbarous, and that St. Aelred selected as the groundwork of his life the one which seemed to him the most authentic. And it is possible that a life referred to by Archbishop Usher, as existing among the Irish, may be the representative of some of the others.

We regard this life then, as representing what St. Aelred considered the most authentic account then existing of St. Ninian, an account not improbably, in tradition at least, almost contemporaneous with the Saint, and supplying the information which Bede and Alcuin possessed respecting him.

Of the authority of St. Aelred as a biographer, little need be said. He, whom even Bale calls a second St. Bernard, was endued with that kindred sanctity which fitted him to be the biographer of a Saint; and his education in the Scottish court and long friendship with the king, and in particular his connexion with Fergus, the lord of Galloway, and his labours for the restoration of religion in that country, as it led him to tread in the footsteps of St. Ninian, would enable him to ascertain all that could be learnt of authority respecting him.

The work was written towards the close of his own life, between 1153 and 1166. It agrees in style with

his other works, and is every way worthy of him. Being intended for spiritual reading and edification, it contains much that is inserted for that end, and throws the sentiments which might be supposed to influence the Saint into the dramatic form of a soliloquy or speech. Perhaps in one or two points it is liable to the charge of anachronism, from the writer's imagining the existence of the customs of his own time, in the days of which he is writing. It is a singular gift in a writer to be able to strip himself of the habits of thought to which he has ever been familiarized, or even constantly to keep in mind that practices existing in his own day are of recent origin. It ought to be added, that St. Aelred's Life bears internal marks of truth, from its correspondence with other history in minute points of chronology, with the circumstances and habits of the age, and with the distinctions of the tribes who occupied the country, as the researches of the latest writers have determined them. Indeed from St. Aelred to the present century, almost all who have written about St. Ninian have fallen into some error or other from which he seems to be free. This life soon became a popular work in our monasteries, if we may argue from the numerous copies which seem to have been made.

It was abridged by John of Tinmouth, and from him was inserted by Capgrave in his collection. It has receiven the highest sanction from the Scottish Church, as selections from it were read as Lessons for St. Ninian's day, in the Aberdeen Breviary. There are copies made within a few years after St. Aelred's death, in the Bodleian and the British Museum ; and it has been printed, though without the Intro

duction, by Pinkerton, in a collection of old Lives of Scottish Saints.

Later writers mention further circumstances respecting St. Ninian, but we have little evidence of their truth. They may in some cases be regarded as traditional stories, and have credit given to them as not being intrinsically improbable, in others the silence of St. Aelred respecting them may be taken as a fair proof that he did not know, or did not believe them. The Irish life referred to by Archbishop Usher does not appear entitled to much consideration.

CHAPTER II.

St. Ninian's early Days.

THE date of St. Ninian's birth must be placed about the middle of the fourth century. Alford has given 360. We may rather conceive it to have been a few years earlier, as in 357, so as to make him forty years of age at his consecration as a Bishop, in 397.

In

His name has been variously written and pronounced. We now uniformly call him Ninian, as he has usually been called in England, and so his name is given in the Roman Martyrology and by St. Aelred. Bede, however, the name is Nynias, in William of Malmesbury Ninas, in other writers Ninus. In Scotland he is popularly called Ringan, the word being pronounced Rin'nan, or Rinnian, or, (as in the Shetland Isles) Ronyan. In Ireland, both Ringan and Ninian. How the difference in the first letter arose (for the