not of women.  Now is God calling me unto Himself out of the prison house of this body.”  When she heard that, she was grievously afflicted, and said, “Father beloved, we shall all die at thy death.  For which of us could live when thou wast absent living?  Much less, when thou art dead.”  Brendan said farther, “On the third day hence, I shall go the way of my fathers.”  Now that day was the Lord’s Day.  Thereon, after the sacraments of the altar had been offered, he saith to them that stood by, “In your supplications, commend my going forth.”  And Briga speaketh and saith, “Father, what fearest thou?” He saith, “I fear that I shall journey alone, that the way will be dark—­I fear the unknown country, the presence of the King, the sentence of the Judge.”  After these things he commanded the brethren to carry his body to the monastery of Clonfert secretly, lest, if they did it openly, it should be kept by them among whom they should pass.  Then when he had kissed them all one by one, he saith unto holy Briga, “Salute my friends on my behalf, and say unto them to beware of evil speaking, even when it is true, how much the more when it is false.”  When he had so spoken and foretold how some things would be in time to come, he passed into everlasting rest, in the 96th year of his age.’  He died, May 16, 577.

By combining with all the collected and credible statements concerning him illustrative matter from the history of his times and the biographies of his contemporaries, it would no doubt be possible to write a life of Brendan, which would be both of considerable bulk and of considerable interest.  But there would be nothing particularly startling or striking about it.  Apart from the interest of public events contemporary with his long career, the monotonous variety produced by his vagabond nature, and such psychical interest as might possibly attach to stories of his mediumistic temperament, it would be rather hum-drum.  Brendan, however, has had the ill luck to be selected by some unknown antient Irish novelist as the hero of a romance of the wildest kind, which has certainly spread his name, if not his fame, in quarters which in all his travels he could never have anticipated.  Even in the Canary Islands, the natives apply the term ‘Isla de San Borondon’ to a peculiar effect like mirage, showing a shadowy presentiment of land, which is sometimes seen off their coasts.  His character as an hero of romance, somewhat of the type of Sinbad the Sailor, if not of that of Gulliver, has even injured him as a subject of serious study.  There has been a sort of custom, to which may be applied a celebrated phrase of Newman, ‘aged but not venerable,’ of confounding the hero of the romance with the real man.  It would be just as proper to identify the hero of the Pickwick Papers with a certain Mr. Pickwick, whom it was, oddly enough, the duty of one of Dickens’ sons to call as a witness in an English law-suit not many years ago.  Even Homer sometimes nods—­at