interest, as taking the place to Provence occupied by Iona to Scotland and
Lindisfarne to Northumberland, a cradle of Christianity, a cradle rocked
by the waves. I cannot do better than quote Montalembert's words on this
topic. "The sailor, the soldier, or the traveller who proceeds from the
roadstead of Toulon to sail towards Italy and the East, passes among two
or three islands, rocky and arid, surmounted here and there by a slender
cluster of pines. He looks at them with indifference, and avoids them.
However, one of these islands has been for the soul, for the mind, for the
moral progress of humanity, a centre purer and more fertile than any famous
isle of the Hellenic Archipelago. It is Lerins, formerly occupied by a
city, which was already ruined in the time of Pliny, and where, at the
commencement of the fifth century, nothing more was to be seen than a
desert coast. In 410, a man landed and remained there; he was called
Honoratus. Descended from a consular race, educated and eloquent, but
devoted from his youth to great piety, he desired to be made a monk. His
father charged his eldest brother, a gay and impetuous young man, to turn
him from his purpose; but, on the contrary, it was he who won over his
brother. Disciples gathered round them. The face of the isle was changed,
the desert became a garden. Honoratus, whose fine face is described to us
as radiant with a sweet and attractive majesty, opened here an asylum and a
school for all such as loved Christ."

From this school went forth disciples, inspired with the spirit of
Honoratus, to rule the churches of Arles, Avignon, Lyons, Vienne, Frejus,
Valence, Nice, Metz, and many others. Honoratus himself, taken from his
peaceful isle to be elevated to the metropolitan see of Arles, had for
his successor, as Abbot of Lerins, and afterwards as Bishop of Arles, his
pupil and kinsman S. Hilary, to whom we owe the admirable biography of his
master. Hilary was celebrated for his graceful eloquence, his unwearied
zeal, his tender sympathy with all forms of suffering, his ascendency over