from the Latin when he became king. Political institutions were in an equal state of disorganization. Spiritual, intellectual, civil, life-everything was to be restored; and Alfred undertook to restore everything. No man in these days stands alone, or towers in unapproachable superiority above his fellows. Nor can any man now play all the parts. A division of labour has taken place in all spheres. The time when the missionaries at once converted and civilized the forefathers of European Christendom, when Charlemagne or Alfred was the master spirit in every thing, has passed away; and with it the day of hero-worship, of rational hero-worship, has departed, at least for the European nations. The more backward races may still need, and have reason to venerate, a Peter the Great. Alfred had to do everything almost with his own hands. He was himself the inventor of the candle-clock which measured his time, so unspeakably precious, and of the lantern of transparent horn which protected the candle-clock against the wind in the tent, or the quarters scarcely more impervious to the weather than a tent, which in those times sheltered the head of wandering royalty. Far and wide he sought for men, like a bee in quest of honey, to condense a some-what prolix trope of his biographer. An embassy of bishops, priests, and religious laymen, with great gifts, was sent to the Archbishop of Rheims, within whose diocese the famous Grimbald resided, to persuade him to allow Grimbald to come to England, and with difficulty the ambassadors prevailed, Alfred promising to treat Grimbald with distinguished honour during the rest of his life. It is touching to see what a price the king set upon a good and able man. "I was called" says Asser, "from the western extremity of Wales. I was led to Sussex, and first saw the king in the royal mansion of Dene. He received me with kindness, and amongst other conversation, earnestly besought me to devote myself to his service, and to become: companion. He begged me to give up preferments beyond the Severn, promis to bestow on me still richer preferments their place." Asser said that he was willing to quit, merely for worldly honour, th country in which he had been brought and ordained. "At least," replied the 2. 'give me half your time. Pass six mont of the year with me and the rest in Wales. Asser still hesitated. The king repeated. solicitations, and Asser promised to re:." within half a year; the time was fixed fɔ:* visit, and on the fourth day of their int view he left the king and went home. 46 In order to restore civilization, it was neces sary above all things to reform the Chur "I have often thought," says Alfred, “*.. wise men there were once among the Er. lish people, both clergy and laymen, ... what blessed times those were when : people were governed by kings who obey God and his gospels, and how they m tained peace, virtue, and good order at honand even extended them beyond their c country; how they prospered in battle a well as in wisdom, and how zealous !" clergy were in teaching and learning, and all their sacred duties; and how people can hither from foreign countries to seek for . struction, whereas now, when we desire it."can only obtain it from abroad." It is cle that the King, unlike the literary devote of Scandinavian paganism, looked up Christianity as the root of the greatness, a. 1 even of the military force, of the nation. In order to restore the Church, again, it was necessary above all things to refound: monasteries, which afterwards-society hav ing become settled, religion being establis and the Church herself having acquired £: wealth-sank into torpor and corruption; which, while the Church was still a missi ary in a spiritual and material wilderness waging a death struggle with heathenisin and barbarism, were the almost indispen sable engines of the holy war. The refcua with Rome, and through her with continental Christendom, which had been interrupted by the troubles. The Pope, upon Alfred's accession, had sent him gifts and a piece of the holy cross. Alfred sent embas dation of monasteries therefore was one of Alfred's first cares; and he did not fail, in token of his pious gratitude, to build at Athelney a house of God which was far holier than the memorial abbey afterwards built by the Norman conqueror at Battle. The revival of monasticism among the Eng-annual offering, to obtain favourable treatlish, however, was probably no easy task; for their domestic and somewhat material nature never was well suited to monastic life. The monastery schools, the germs, as has been already said, of our modern universities and colleges, were the King's main organs in restoring education. But he had also a But he had also a school in his palace for the children of the nobility and the royal household. It was not only clerical education that he desired to promote. His wish was "that all the freeborn youth of his people, who possessed the means, might persevere in learning so long as they had no other work to occupy them, until they could perfectly read the English scriptures; while such as desired to devote themselves to the service of the Church might be taught Latin." No doubt the wish was most imperfectly fulfilled, but still it was a noble wish. We are told the King himself was often present at the instruction of the children in the palace school. A pleasant calm after the storms of battle with the Dane. Oxford (Ousen-ford, the ford of the Ouse) was already a royal city; and there can be little doubt that, amidst the general restoration of learning under Alfred, a school of some sort would be opened there. This is the only vestige of historical foundation for the academic legend which gave rise to the recent celebration. Oxford was desolated by the Norman Conquest, and anything that remained of the educational institutions of Alfred was in all probability swept away. Another measure, indispensable to the civilizer as well as to the church reformer in those days, was to restore the intercourse sies to the Pope, and made a voluntary ment for his subjects at Rome. But, adopted child of Rome, and naturally attached to her as the centre of ecclesiastical order and its civilizing influences though he was, and much as he was surrounded by ecclesiastical friends and ministers, we trace in him no ultramontanism, no servile submission to priests. to priests. The English Church, so far as we can see, remains national, and the English King remains its head. Not only with Latin but with Eastern Christendom, Alfred, if we may trust the contemporary Saxon chronicles, opened communication. As Charlemagne, in the spirit partly perhaps of piety, partly of ambition, had sent an embassy with proofs of his grandeur to the Caliph of Bagdad, as Louis XIV., in the spirit of mere ambition, delighted to receive an embassy from Siam, Alfred, in a spirit of pure piety, sent ambassadors to the traditional Church of St. Thomas in India; and the ambassadors returned, we are told, with perfumes and precious stones as the memorials of their journey, which were long preserved in the churches. "This was the first intercourse," remarks Pauli, "that took place between England and Hindostan." All nations are inclined to ascribe their pri mitive institutions to some national founder, a Lycurgus, a Theseus, or a Romulus. It is not necessary now to prove that Alfred did not found trial by jury, or the frankpledge, or that he was not the first who divided the kingdom into shires, hundreds, or tithings. The part of trial by jury which has been politically of so much importance, its popular character, as opposed to arbitrary trial by a royal or imperial officer--that of which the preservation, amidst the gen eral prevalence of judicial imperialism, has been the glory of England-was simply Teutonic; so was the frank-pledge, the rude machinery for preserving law and order by mutual responsibility in the days before police; so were the hundreds and the tithings, rudimentary institutions marking the transition from the clan to the local community or canton. The shires probably marked some stage in the consolidation of the Saxon settlements; at all events they were ancient divisions which Alfred can have done no more than revise after the anarchy. He seems, however, to have introduced a real and momentous innovation by appointing special judges to administer a more regular justice than that which was administered in the local courts of the earls and bishops, or even in the national assembly. In this respect he was the imitator, probably the unconscious imitator, of Charlemagne, and the precursor of Henry II., the institutor of our Justices in Eyre. The powers and functions of the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary, lie at first enfolded in the same germ, and are alike exercised by the king, or, as in the case of the ancient republics, by the national assembly. It is a great step when the special office of the judiciary is separated from the rest. It is a great step also when uniformity of justice is introduced. Probably, however, these judges, like the itinerant justices of Henry II., were administrative as well as judicial officers; or in the terms of our modern polity, they were delegates of the Home Office as well as of the Central Courts of Law. In his laws Alfred, with the sobriety and caution on which the statesmen of his race have prided themselves, renounces the character of an innovator, fearing, as he says, that his innovations might not be accepted by those who would come after him. His code, if so inartificial a document can be dignified with the name, is mainly a compilation from the laws of his Saxon predecessors, We trace, however, an advance from the barbarous system of weregeld, or composition for murder and other crimes as private wrongs, towards a State system of criminal justice. In totally forbidding composition for blood, and asserting that indefeasible sanctity of human life which is the essential basis of civilization, the code of Moses stands contrasted with other primeval codes. Alfred, in fact, incorporated an unusually large amount of the Mosaic and Christian elements, which blend with Germanic customs and the relics of Roman law, in different proportions, to make up the various codes of the early middle ages, called the Laws of the Barbarians. His code opens with the Ten Commandments, followed by extracts from Exodus, containing the Mosaic law respecting the relations between masters and servants, murder and other crimes, and the observance of holy days, and the Apos tolic Epistle from Acts xv. 23-29. Then is added Matthew vii. 12, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." "By this one Commandment," says Alfred, "a man shall know whether he does right, and he will then require no other law-book." This is not the form of a modern Act of Parliament, but legislation in those days was as much preaching as enactment; it often resembled in character the Queen's Proclamation against Vice and Immorality. Alfred's laws unquestionably show a tendency to enforce loyalty to the king and to enhance the guilt of treason, which, in the case of an attempt on the king's life, is punished with death and confiscation, instead of the old composition by payment of the royal weregeld. Hence he has been accused of imperializing and anti-Teutonic tendencies; he had even the misfortune to be fixed upon as a prototype by Oxford advocates of the absolutism of Charles I. There is no ground for the charge, so far at least as Alfred's legislation or any known measure of his government is concerned. The kingly power was the great source of order and justice amidst that anarchy, the sole rallying point and bond of union for the imperilled nation; to maintain it, and protect from violence the life of its holder, was the duty of a patriot law-giver and as the authority of a Saxon king depended in great measure on his personal character and position, no doubt the personal authority of Alfred was exceptionally great. But he continued to govern by the advice of the national council; and the fundamental principles of the Teutonic polity remained unimpaired by him, and were transmitted intact to his successors. His writings breathe a sense of the responsibilities of rulers and a hatred of tyranny. He did not even attempt to carry further the incorporation of the subordinate kingdoms with Wessex ; but ruled Mercia as a separate state by the hand of his brother-in-law, and left it its own national council or witan. Considering his circumstances, and the chaos from which his government had emerged, it is wonderful that he did not centralize more. He was, we repeat, a true Teuton, and worthy of his place in the Germanic Walhalla. The most striking proof of his multifarious activity of mind, and of the unlimited extent of the task which his circumstances imposed upon him, as well as of his thoroughly English character, is his undertaking to give his people a literature in their own tongue. To do this he had first to educate himself to educate himself at an advanced age, after a life of fierce distraction, and with the reorganization of his shattered kingdom on his hands. In his boyhood he had got by heart Saxon lays, vigorous and inspiring, but barbarous; he had learned to read, but it is thought that he had not learned to write. "As we were one day sitting in the royal chamber," says Asser, "and were conversing as was our wont, it chanced that I read him a passage out of a certain book. After he had listened with fixed attention, and expressed great delight, he showed me the little book which he always carried about with him, and in which the daily lessons, psalms and prayers, were written, and begged me to transcribe that passage into his book." Asser assented, but found that the book was already full, and proposed to the king to begin another book, which was soon in its turn filled with extracts. A portion of the process of Alfred's education is recorded by Asser. "I was honourably received at the royal mansion, and at that time stayed eight months in the king's court. I translated and read to him whatever books he wished which were within our reach; for it was his custom, day and night, amidst all his afflictions of mind and body, to read books himself or to have them read to him by others." To original composition Alfred did not aspire; he was content with giving his people a body of translations of what he deemed the best authors; here again showing his royal good sense. In the selection of his authors, he shows liberality and freedom from Roman, ecclesiastical, imperialist, or other bias. On the one hand he chooses for the benefit of the clergy whom he desired to reform, the "Pastoral Care" of the good Pope, Gregory the Great, the author of the mission which had converted England to Christianity; but on the other hand he chooses the "Consolations of Philosophy," the chief work of Boethius, the last of the Romans, and the victim of the cruel jealousy of Theodoric, of whom Hallam says: "Last of the classic writers, in style not impure, though displaying too lavishly that poetic exuberance which had distinguished the two or three preceding centuries; in elevation of sentiment equal to any of the philosophers; and, mingling a Christian sanctity with their lessons, he speaks from his prison in the swan-like tones of dying eloquence. The philosophy which consoled him in bonds was soon required in the sufferings of a cruel death. Quenched in his blood, the lamp he had trimmed with a skilful hand gave no more light; the language of Tully and Virgil soon The political world had not much advanced when, six centuries after Alfred, it arrived at Machiavelli. There is an especial sadness in the tone of some words respecting the estate of kings, their intrinsic weakness, disguised only by their royal trains, the mutual dread that exists between them and those by whom they are surrounded, the drawn sword that hangs over their heads, "as to me it ever did." We seem to catch a glimpse of some trials, and perhaps errors, not recorded by Asser or the chroniclers. ceased to be spoken; and many ages were to pass away before learned diligence restored its purity, and the union of genius with imitation taught a few modern writers to surpass in eloquence the Latinity of Boethius." Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English, the highest product of that memorable burst of Saxon intellect which followed the conversion, and a work, though not untainted by miracle and legend, most remarkable for its historical qualities as well as for its mild and liberal Christianity, is balanced in the king's series of translations by the work of Orosius, who wrote of In his private life Alfred appears to have general and secular history, though with a been an example of conjugal fidelity and religious object. In the translation of Orosius, Alfred has inserted a sketch of the geo-asceticism which was revered by the supermanly purity, while we see no traces of the graphy of Germany, and the reports of explorations made by two mariners under his auspices among the natives dwelling on the coasts of the Baltic and the North Sea; further proof of the variety of his interests and the reach of his mind. passages stition of the age of Ed ward the Confessor. His words on the value and the claims of a sentiment, are at least instinct with genuine wife, if not up to the standard of modern affection. The struggle with the Northmen was not over. Their swarms came again in the latter part of Alfred's reign, from Germany, whence they had been repulsed, and from France, which they had exhausted by their ravages. But the King's generalship foiled them and compelled them to depart. Seeing where their strength lay, he built a regular fleet to encounter them on their own element, and he may be called the founder of the Royal Navy. In his prefaces and in his amplifications and interpolations of the philosophy of Boethius, Alfred comes before us an independent author, and shows us something of his own mind on theology, on psychology, on government, and generally as to the estate of man. To estimate these rightly, we must put ourselves back into the anarchical and illiterate England of the ninth century, and imagine an author, who if we could see him, would appear barbarous and grotesque, as would all his equipments and surroundings, and one who had spent his days in a desperate struggle with wolfish Danes, at his literary work in his rude Saxon mansion, with his candle-clock protected by the horn lantern against the wind. The utterances of Alfred will then appear altogether worthy of his character and his deeds. He always emphasizes and expands passages which speak either of the responsibilities of rulers or of the nothingness of earthly power; and the reflections are pervaded by a pensiveness which reminds us of Marcus Aurelius. perial ascendancy. At last its hour came; His victory was decisive. The English monarchy rose from the ground in renewed strength, and entered on a fresh lease of greatness. A line of able kings followed Alfred. His son and successor, Edward, inherited his vigour. His favourite grandson, Athelstan, smote the Dane and the Scot together at Brunanburgh, and awoke by his glorious victory the last echoes of Saxon song. Under Edgar the greatness of the monarchy reached its highest pitch, and it embraced the whole island under its im |