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[Garone <ove...@vi...>]

Ale theory has, in truth, as little in its favour as the old, but
groundless, tradition that St. Patrick founded a monastery and ended his
days at Menevia. This is plainly contradicted by the Saint's assertion
that after he had landed as a missionary in Ireland he never once left,
and ended his days in the land of his adoption. "Though I could have
wished to leave them" (the Irish), writes the Saint in his "Confession,"
"and had been desirous of going to Britain, as if to my own country and
parents, and not that alone, but even to Gaul to visit my brethren, and
see the face of the Lord's Saints. But I am bound in the spirit, and He
who witnesseth all will account me guilty if I do it, and I fear to lose
the labour which I have begun; and not I, but the Lord Christ, who
commanded me to come and remain with them for the rest of my life, if
the Lord prolongs it, and keeps me from all sin before Him." This
statement, which was made by St. Patrick just before his death, when he
wrote the "Confession," could never have been volunteered if he had once
left the country where the Lord had commanded him to remain for the rest
of his life. THE SCOTCH THEORIES ON THIS SUBJECT. The Scholiast and
Colgan, who identify the Crag of Dumbarton with the Nemthur of the
Saint's nativity, are faced by the unanswerable difficulty that though
Nemthur may be the name of a tower, or may be the name of the district
in which the tower stood, it cannot be the name of a town. The Saint in
his "Confession" states that his father hailed from the suburban
district of a town called Bonaven Tabernise, where he possessed a
country seat, from which he (the Saint) was carried off into captivity.
Bonaven, therefore, is rightly regarded as St. Patrick's native town.
St. Fiacc simply states that St. Patrick was born at Nemthur, but he
does not assart that Nemthur was a town, otherwise he would be at
variance with his Patron, who plainly gives us to understand that he was
born at Bonaven Tabernise, The only way of