letters to Charlemagne are still extant, in which the supremacy of the English schools and libraries is distinctly recognized, as well as the direct influence exercised by them on Frankish literature, and, as in those days literature and illumination were inseparable, on illumination also. Thus, in one place he begs his master to give him "those exquisite books of erudition which I had in my own country by the good and devout industry of my master Egbert, the archbishop." Again, referring to the same "treasures of wisdom," he proposes,--"If it shall please your wisdom, I will send some of our boys, who may copy from thence whatever is necessary, and carry back into France the flowers of Britain; that the garden may not be shut up in York, but the fruits of it may be placed in the paradise of Tours." One of the evidences of the eagerness with which this task of multiplying the sources of learning was carried on, is to be found in the attempts made to abridge and expedite labour. Thus, as M. Chassant[47] observes in his useful little manual of abbreviations[48] used during the Middle Ages, the texts of all documents of importance were comparatively free from contractions from the period when Justinian the Great banished them, by an imperial edict, from all legal instruments, until the accession of Charlemagne, "during whose reign, either to save time or vellum, the scribes revived the ancient Roman practice of using initials, and frequently arbitrary signs, to represent whole words of frequent recurrence."