The civilizing value of the monasteries can hardly be overrated. Secure in the peace conferred upon them by a religious sanction, the monks became the builders of schools, the drainers of marsh-land, the clearers of forest, the tillers of heath. Many of the earliest religious houses rose in the midst of what had been trackless wilds. Peterborough and Ely grew up on islands of the fen county. Crowland gathered round the cell of Guthlac in the midst of a desolate mere. Evesham occupied a glade in the wild forests of the western march. Glastonbury, an old Welsh foundation, stood on a solitary islet where the abrupt knoll of the Tor looks down upon the broad waste of the Somersetshire marshes. Beverley, as its name imports, had been a haunt of beavers before the monks began to till its fruitful dingles. In every case agriculture soon turned the wild lands into orchards and corn-fields, or drove drains through the fens which converted their marshes into meadows and pastures for the long-horned English cattle.

Roman architecture, too, came with the Roman Church. We hear nothing before of stone buildings; but Eadwine erected a church of stone at York, under the direction of Paulinus; and Bishop Wilfrith, a generation later, restored and decorated it, covering the roof with lead and filling the windows with panes of glass. Masons had already been settled in Kent, though Benedict, the founder of Wearmouth and Jarrow, found it desirable to bring over others from the Franks. Metal-working had always been a special gift of the English, and their gold jewelry was well made even before the conversion, but it became still more noticeable after the monks took the craft into their own hands. Beda mentions mines of copper, iron, lead, silver, and jet. Abbot Benedict not only brought manuscripts from Rome, which were copied and imitated in his monasteries at Wearmouth and Jarrow, but he also brought over glass-blowers, who introduced the art of glass-making into England. Cuthbreht, Beda's scholar, writes to Lull, asking for workmen who

can make glass vessels. Bells appear to have been equally early introductions. Roman music, of course, accompanied the Roman liturgy. The connection established with the clergy of the continent favored the dispersion of European goods throughout England. We constantly hear of presents, consisting of skilled handicraft, passing from the civilized south to the rude and barbaric north. Wilfrith and Benedict journeyed several times to and from Rome, enlarging their own minds by intercourse with Roman society, and returning laden with works of art or manuscripts of value. Beda was acquainted with the writings of all the chief classical poets and philosophers, whom he often quotes. We can only liken the results of such intercourse to those which, in our own time, have proceeded from the opening of Japan to western ideas, or of the Hawaiian Islands to European civilization and European missionaries. The English school, which soon sprang up at Rome, and the Latin schools, which soon sprang up at York and Canterbury, are precise equivalents of the educational movements in both those countries which we see in our own day. The monks were to learn Latin and Greek as well as they learned their own tongue," and were so to be given the key of all the literature and all the science that the world then possessed.

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The monasteries thus became real manufacturing, agricultural, and literary centers on a small scale. The monks boiled down the salt of the brine-pits; they copied and illuminated manuscripts in the library; they painted pictures not without rude merit of their own; they ran rhines through the marshy moorlands; they tilled the soil with vigor and success. A new culture began to occupy the land -the culture whose fully-developed form we now see around us. But it must never be forgotten that in its origin it is wholly Roman and not at all Anglo-Saxon. Our people showed themselves singularly apt at embracing it, like the modern Polynesians, and unlike the American Indians; but

they did not invent it for themselves. Our existing culture is not home-bred at all; it is simply the inherited and widened culture of Greece and Italy.

V.

ALFRED'S EARLY YEARS.-FREEMAN.

[It was in the reign of Ecgberht, king of Wessex, that all the English kingdoms were united for the first time under one ruler. But the young State was no sooner formed than it was forced to face a new danger in the invasion of the Northmen or Danes. These people came from the Scandinavian kingdoms of the north of Europe, were of the same blood as the English, but were far behind them in civilization, and were still heathen. They began to land in England, to harry the country, and to carry off their spoil. At first as robbers, then as settlers, and finally as conquerors, for two centuries they occupy a large space in English history. In the midst of their invasions Alfred ascended the West-Saxon throne, and a large portion of his life was devoted to beating off their attacks.]

We now come to our great King Alfred, the best and greatest of all our kings. We know quite enough of his history to be able to say that he really deserves to be so called, though I must warn you that, just because he left so great a name behind him, people have been fond of attributing to him things which really belonged to others. Thus you may sometimes see nearly all our laws and customs attributed to Alfred, as if he had invented them all for himself. You will sometimes hear that Alfred founded trial by jury, divided England into counties, and did all kinds of other things. Now the real truth is that the roots and beginnings of most of these things are very much older than the time of Alfred, while the particular forms in which we have them now are very much later. But people have a way of fancying that every thing must have been invented by some particular man, and, as Alfred was more famous than any body else, they hit upon

Alfred as the most likely person to have invented them. But, putting aside fables, there is quite enough to show that there have been very few kings, and very few men of any sort, so great and good as King Alfred. Perhaps the only equally good king we read of is Saint Lewis of France; and, though he was quite as good, we cannot set him down as being so great and wise as Alfred. Certainly no king ever gave himself up more thoroughly than Alfred did fully to do the duties of his office. His whole life seems to have been spent in doing all he could for the good of his people in every way. And it is wonderful in how many ways his powers showed themselves. That he was a brave warrior is in itself no particular praise in an age when almost every man was the same. But it is a great thing for a prince, so large a part of whose time was spent in fighting, to be able to say that all his wars were waged to set free his country from the most cruel enemies. And we may admire, too, the wonderful way in which he kept his mind always straight and firm, never either giving way to bad luck or being puffed up by good luck. We read of nothing like pride or cruelty or injustice of any kind either toward his own people or toward his enemies. And if he was a brave warrior, he was many other things besides. He was a lawgiver; at least he collected and arranged the laws, and caused them to be most carefully administered. He was a scholar, and wrote and translated many books for the good of his people. He encouraged trade and enterprise of all kinds, and sent men to visit distant parts of the world and bring home accounts of what they saw. And he was a thoroughly good man and a devout Christian in all relations of life. In short, one hardly knows any other character in all history so perfect, there is so much that is good in so many different ways; and, though no doubt Alfred had his faults, like other people, yet he clearly had none, at any rate in the greater part of his life, which took away at all seriously from his general goodness.

One wonders that such a man was never canonized as a saint; most certaintly many people have received that name who did not deserve it nearly so well as he did.

Alfred, or, as his name should really be spelled, Ælfred, was the youngest son of King Ethelwulf, and was born at Wantage, in Berkshire, in 849. His mother was Osburh, the first, or perhaps the second, wife of Ethelwulf, She was the daughter of Oslac, the king's cup-bearer, who came of the royal house of the Jutes in Wight. Now a story is told of Alfred and his mother, which you may, perhaps, have heard already, and which is such a beautiful tale that I am really sorry to have to say that it cannot possibly be true. We are told that up to the age of twelve years Alfred was fond of hunting and other sports, but that he had not been taught any sort of learning, not so much as to read his own tongue. But he loved the old English songs; and one day his mother had a beautiful book of songs, with rich pictures and fine painted initial letters, such as you may often see in ancient books. And she said to her children, "I will give this beautiful book to the one of you who shall first be able to read it." And Alfred said, "Mother, will you really give me the book when I have learned to read it?" And Osburh said, "Yes, my son." So Alfred went and found a master, and soon learned to read. Then he came to his mother and read the songs in the beautiful book, and took the book for his own.

Now it is a great pity that so pretty a story cannot be true, and I must tell you why it cannot. Alfred was sent to Rome to the pope when he was four years old; and if the pope took him as his "bishop-son," and anointed him to be king, one cannot help thinking that he would have taught him to read, and to learn Latin. And it is quite certain that he could do both very well in after life. Still this is not quite certain proof, as he might have learned afterward. But one thing is quite certain. Alfred was not twelve years old till 861. By