obedience to his mother, and his happiness in receiving instruction from her lips, were to him meat and drink, night and day. The style of his works in his native tongue proves his acquaintance with the classical models; and his stay in Rome no doubt, young as he was, laid the foundation of that love for antiquity which attended him at all times.

One of the greatest impediments to his studies in early life seems to have been the difficulty he experienced in the learning of Latin. It was then taught in a barbarous way by those who did not know how to teach, as it is sometimes now done; and he saw that much that was good was locked up in Latin chests, of which English boys could not get the key. So he recommended from the throne, in a circular letter addressed to the bishops, that thenceforward all good and useful books be translated into the language which we all understand, so that the youths of England, but more especially such as are of gentle kind and in easy circumstances, might be grounded in real knowledge. How different has it been, almost to the present date, when those noble endowments, the Grammar Schools of England, were made to teach nothing but Latin! Alfred's mind was too lofty for pedantry to reach it, and too liberal and expansive to entertain the idea that learning ought to be kept in a foreign disguise, out of the reach of the people. He looked to their intellectual improvement and their religious instruction, as the only solid foundation upon which a government could repose or a throne be established: and his doctrine was, Let there be churches, abbeys, schools and books; let the churches be served by active and conscientious priests; let the abbeys be filled by the most learned men that can be found; let the schools be conducted by able masters; and let the books be in the language which is spoken by the people.

And this theory was carried into practice to an extent which is surprising for those times.

In order that there might be books for the people to read, he wrote many himself; and even as an author, no native of England or of our Saxon period, except the venerable Bede, can be compared to Alfred, either for the number or for the excellence of his writings. He was an elegant poet, and wrote a great many Anglo-Saxon poems and ballads, which were sung or recited in all parts of England; but more especially was he anxious that the people should know and understand the Scriptures, and it is said that he intended to have made a complete translation of the sacred volume, but his life was too short for such a gigantic undertaking.

His own large mind was ever open to instruction on any subject. He loved the society and conversation of travellers. Johannes Scotus, Othere, Wulstan, Orosius, each of whom had travelled into various parts of the world, were hospitably entertained at his court. He made notes of the wonders they related, and he sent out Swithelm, Bishop of Sherburn, on an overland route to India; and he went and came back in safety, bringing with him presents from the King of Jerusalem, and even princes of the Nile and of the Desert.

"No man," says Milton, "could be more frugal of two of the most precious things in man's life than Alfred—that is, his time and his money." His whole annual revenue, which his first care was should be justly his own, he divided into two equal parts. The first he employed in secular uses, and subdivided those into three,-the first to pay his soldiers, household servants, and guard; the second, to pay his architects and workmen, for he applied himself to building and the restoration of sacred edifices; the third he had in readiness to honour strangers with. The other equal part of his

yearly wealth he dedicated to religious uses-first, to relieve the poor; the second, to endow monasteries; the third, to the founding of schools; and the fourth, for the relief of some foreign churches.

He was also anxious, above all things, that his subjects should know how to govern themselves, and how to preserve their liberties; and in his will he declared that he left his people free as their own thoughts. He frequently assembled his Witenagemot, or wise-age folk, the parliament, and never passed any law or took any important step whatever without their previous sanction. Down to the last year of his precious life he heard all law appeals in person with the utmost patience, and revised all the proceedings with the utmost industry. His manifold labours in the court, the camp, and the field, the hall of justice and the study, must have been prodigious. One cannot help being amazed that a prince who lived in such turbulent times, who commanded personally in fifty-four pitched battles, who had a disordered province to regulate, who was not only a legislator but a judge, and who was continually superintending his armies, his navies, the traffic of his kingdom, and the conduct of all his officers, could have bestowed so much of his time on religious exercises and speculative knowledge. Our amazement increases when we read that all this bodily and mental activity was made in spite of physical pain and constant bad health.

Although remarkable for the beauty of his person, Alfred was afflicted for many years with a most tormenting malady, the seat and cure of which baffled all the physicians of those days. But the good monk Asser, who withdraws the curtain and admits us into the sick room of the sovereign, tells us that Heaven vouchsafed him strength to bear these mortal agonies, and that they were borne with a devout fortitude.

The same ancient biographer says: "That in the midst of wars, and all the impediments of his life, he attended to his artificers, to his huntsmen and dog-trainers, and recited Saxon books and learned Saxon verses by heart; and often, in the assiduousness of his studies, he forgot to dine. At night he was in the church, at divine ministerings, at services, and praying, all the while he was more affable and jocund than other men." This shepherd of the people, this darling of the English, this best and wisest of the kings of Europe, expired in the month of November, on the festival of St. Simon and St. Jude, in the year 900,* when he was only in the fifty-first year of his age. He was buried at Winchester, in a monastery he had founded.

The old writers, however, differ as to the date of Alfred's death: some fix it in October 901, others give different dates.

ERHAPS there is nothing so truly hideous in the whole of creation aswhat? Not as a grizzly bear, an untamed tiger, a savage rhinoceros, a deadly boa-constrictor, an adder, a scorpion, a false friend, or an ungrateful man;-none of these are so hideous in the sight of God and man as a wilfully corrupt, determinately wicked, disobedient son: one who, in the unnaturalness of his nature, breaks his father's heart, and sends his white hairs with sorrow to the grave.

King Henry the Fourth was, as every one knows who reads English history, a usurper. He had obtained the