the habit of
vomiting frogs. When I read this, I said to myself: Some of the croakers
of the present day against Progress would be the better for such a
vomit.

The history of Charlemagne was written by Turpin, of Rheims. He was a
bishop. He assures us that the walls of a city fell down in answer
to prayer. That there were giants in those days who could take fifty
ordinary men under their arms and walk away with them. "With the
greatest of these, a direct descendant of Goliath, one Orlando had a
theological discussion, and that in the heat of the debate, when the
giant was overwhelmed with the argument, Orlando rushed forward and
inflicted a fatal stab."

The history of Britain, written by the arch-. deacons of Monmouth and
Oxford, was wonderfully popular. According to them, Brutus conquered
England and built the city of London. During his time, it rained pure
blood for three days. At another time, a monster came from the sea, and,
after having devoured great multitudes of people, swallowed the king
and disappeared. They tell us that King Arthur was not born like other
mortals, but was the result of a magical contrivance; that he had
great luck in killing giants; that he killed one in France that had
the cheerful habit of eating some thirty men a day. That this giant had
clothes woven of the beards of the kings he had devoured. To cap the
climax, one of the authors of this book was promoted for having written
the only reliable history of his country.

In all the histories of those days there is hardly a single truth. Facts
were considered unworthy of preservation. Anything that really happened
was not of sufficient interest or importance to be recorded. The great
religious historian, Eusebius, ingenuously remarks that in his history
he carefully omitted whatever tended to discredit the church, and that
he piously magnified all that conduced to her glory.

The same glorious principle was scrupulously adhered to by all the
historians of that time.

They wrote, and the people believed, that the tracks of Pharoah's
chariots were still visible on the sands of the Red Sea, and that they
had been miraculously preserved from the winds and waves as perpetual
witnesses of the great miracle there performed.

It is safe to say that every truth in the histories of those times is
the result of accident or mistake.

They accounted for everything as the work of good and evil spirits. With
cause and effect they had nothing to