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Says Waddington: "The ecclesiastical records of fifteen centuries ... contain no name so loathsome, no crimes so foul as his.... Not one among the many zealous annalists of the Roman church has breathed a whisper in his praise.... He publicly cohabited with a Roman matron named Vanozia, by whom he had five acknowledged children.

Governor Hamilton is defeated and himself taken prisoner," etc. It is curious that none of the Tennessee annalists have noticed the departure of this expedition; very, very few of the deeds and wanderings of the old frontiersmen have been recorded; and in consequence historians are apt to regard these few as being exceptional, instead of typical.

It is this which has been so wrongly described by European annalists, and of which the British until now have maintained the most jealous secrecy. Portsmouth Harbor was badly defended.

The annals of the Four Masters will stand to the end of the world as a proud monument of the services rendered to the Irish church and to history by these illustrious annalists; and when the deeds of the most renowned knights and chieftains of this royal house shall have been obliterated by the merciless chisel of time, the authors of the Four Masters' Annals will become only brighter among the shining stars that adorn the literary firmament of old Ireland.

We believe him; but had his purpose been, not "to denounce in general terms the venerable precedents so constantly quoted by our annalists, but to show their defects and their errors in detail," he would hardly have used them, as he has done, as mere wadding for the great gun which he was loading, and which has exploded with such terrible effect.

The interval between the close of the fifteenth century and the end of the sixteenth is set apart by Japanese annalists as the most disturbed period of the country's history and is distinguished by the term Sengoku Jidai, or the Epoch of Wars.

Motley, as might be expected from his creed and his life-long pursuits. This I shall refer to in connection with Motley's last work, "John of Barneveld." An historian among archivists and annalists reminds one of Sir John Lubbock in the midst of his ant-hills. Undoubtedly he disturbs the ants in their praiseworthy industry, much as his attentions may flatter them.

He does not appear to have made researches into the many original documents which were extant at his time, but he trusted to the annalists, and took advantage of the investigations of preceding historians. His descriptions of military affairs are often vague and indistinct, and he often shows himself ignorant of the localities which he describes.

For the rest, the Nihon Shoki, which resulted from the labours of these annalists and literati, was so Chinese that its authors did not hesitate to draw largely upon the cosmogonic myths of the Middle Kingdom, and to put into the mouths of Japanese monarchs, or into their decrees, quotations from Chinese literature.

My informants were the most experienced councillors, and especially the "wampum-keepers," the official annalists of their people. Their names, and some account of them, will be given in a subsequent chapter.