It was doubtless due to this urbane wisdom that the history of the conversion of Ireland is without one story of martyrdom.  The change was carried out in open-hearted frankness and good-will, the old order giving place to the new as gently as spring changes to summer.  The most marvelous example of St. Patrick’s wisdom, and at the same time the most wonderful testimony to his personal force, is his action towards the existing civil and religious law of the country, commonly known as the Brehon Law.  Principles had by long usage been wrought into the fabric of the Brehon Laws which were in flat contradiction to St. Patrick’s teaching of the New Way.  Instead of fiercely denouncing the whole system, he talked with the chief jurists and heralds,—­custodians of the old system,—­and convinced them that changes in their laws would give effect to more humane and liberal principles.  They admitted the justice of his view, and agreed to a meeting between three great chieftains or kings, three Brehons or jurists, and three of St. Patrick’s converts, to revise the whole system of law, substituting the more humane principles, which they had already accepted as just and right.  These changes were made and universally applied; so that, without any violent revolution, without strife or bloodshed, the better way became the accepted law.  It would be hard to find in all history a finer example of wisdom and moderation, of the great and worthy way of accomplishing right ends.

We have seen the great Messenger himself founding monasteries, houses of religious study, and churches for his converts, on land given to him by chieftains who were moved by his character and ideals.  We can judge of the immediate spread of his teaching if we remember that these churches were generally sixty feet long, thus giving room for many worshippers.  They seem to have been built of stone—­almost the first use of that material in Ireland since the archaic days.  Among the first churches of this type were those at Saul, at Donaghpatrick on the Blackwater, and at Armagh, with others further from the central region of St. Patrick’s work.  The schools of learning which grew up beside them were universally esteemed and protected, and from them came successive generations of men and women who worthily carried on the work so wisely begun.  The tongues first studied were Latin and Irish.  We have works of very early periods in both, as, for instance, the Latin epistles of St. Patrick himself, and the Irish poems of the hardly less eminent Colum Kill.  But other languages were presently added.

[Illustration:  Valley of Glendalough and Ruins of the Seven Churches.]