* * * * *

Such an idea as this of first "stopping the rivers" might well have been
conceived independently by different peoples, but surely not by such a
race so low in the scale of humanity as the Ainos, who must have got the
story from the Japanese, who in their turn probably derived it from some
Indian-Buddhist source--perhaps a version of the Book of Sindibad. Of
course, the several European versions and variants have been copied out
of one book into another, and independent invention is out of the
question.

IGNORANCE OF THE CLERGY IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

_Orl._ Whom ambles Time withal?

_Ros._ With a priest that lacks Latin; for he sleeps easily,
because he cannot study, lacking the burden of lean and wasteful
learning.--_As You Like It_.

During the 7th and 8th centuries the state of letters throughout
Christian Europe was so low that very few of the bishops could compose
their own discourses, and some of those Church dignitaries thought it no
shame to publicly acknowledge their inability to write their own names.
Numerous instances occur in the Acts of the Councils of Ephesus and
Chalcedon of an inscription in these words: "I, ----, have subscribed
by the hand of ----, because I cannot write"; and such a bishop having
thus confessed that he could not write, there followed: "I, ----, whose
name is underwritten, have therefore subscribed for him."

Alfred the Great--who was twelve years of age before a tutor could be
found competent to teach him the alphabet--complained, towards the close
of the 9th century, that "from the Humber to the Thames there was not a
priest who understood the liturgy in his mother-tongue, or could
translate the easiest piece of Latin"; and a correspondent of Abelard,
about the middle of the 12th century, complimenting him upon a resort to
him of pupils from all countries, says that "even Britain, distant as
she is, sends her savages to be instructed by you."

Henri Etienne, in the Introduction to his Apology for Herodotus,[148]
says that "the most brutish and blockish ignorance was to be found in
friars' cowls, especially mass-mongering priests, which we are the less
to wonder at, considering that which Menot twits them in the teeth
withal, that instead of books there was nothing to be found in their
chambers but a sword, or a long-bow, or a cross-bow, or some such
weapon. But how could they send _ad ordos_ such ignorant asses? You must