ately followed by the usurpation of Boris Godunow, after he had caused Feodore's only brother Demetrius, the heir to the crown, to be assassinated, was the occasion of protracted troubles to Russia. It appears to have been about the commencement of these convulsions that Alphery and his two brothers were sent by their friends for safety to England, and entrusted to the care of a merchant, connected by commercial relations with their native country. Their protector gave them a liberal education, and at the proper age they were all entered of the University of Oxford. Soon after this, however, two of them were attacked by small pox and died. Nicephorus, the survivor, now resolved to take orders in the English church; and, accordingly, having been ordained, he was appointed in 1618 to the living of Wooley, in Huntingdonshire, the income of which was barely sufficient to afford him a maintenance. By this time the throne of his ancestors was in the possession of Michael Fedrowitch Romanow, who was the son of a patriarch of the Greek church, and had, in 1613, when only sixteen years of age, obtained the imperial crown, which has ever since been worn by his descendants. Thus, while, on the one hand, the church had received into her ranks the heir of an empire, that empire, on the other hand, received a sovereign from the church. The disturbances that had so long distracted Russia, however, were not settled by the accession of Michael; and it is asserted that, subsequently to this period, Nicephorus was actually twice invited to return to his native country and put himself at the head of a powerful party who desired to place him on the throne. But, with a want of ambition which many will despise, although its wisdom might perhaps be defended, he preferred, on both occasions, his humble parsonage to this splendid temptation. Never having obtained any additional

preferment, he long made himself happy by the discharge of his duties in the lowly condition he had embraced; and his meek spirit was probably but rarely troubled even by a thought of the exalted station to which he once might have attained. After settling at Wooley he married, and had a family. Alphery was not destined, however, even by his relinquishment of the rights of his birth, to escape the storms of political commotion; for, on the ascendancy of the republican party after the civil wars, he was deprived of his living, and, with his wife and children, compelled to wander about for some time without a home; nor did he recover his benefice till the Restoration. By this time the infirmities of advanced age had left him but little strength for the performance of his wonted duties; and, leaving his parish in charge of a curate, he soon after retired to Hammersmith, to the house of one of his sons who was settled there. In this retirement he lived for some years, unnoticed, but not unhappy; and when his death took place at last, his singular fortunes had been so much forgotten by all the world that nobody has recorded the date of the event.

We read nothing of any remarkable acquirements in literature made by this individual; but if moderation of desires be a quality of the philosophic spirit, he is entitled to be regarded as no ordinary philosopher. Many others, however, might be enumerated, who even on a throne have cultivated science and letters, and intermingled the occupations of study with those of sovereignty. We may mention among the Roman emperors the excellent MARCUS AURELIUS, a prince who, with some failings, manifested many virtues that have rarely adorned in the same degree either a public or a private station. Called to the imperial dignity contrary to his own wishes, Aurelius, who had been a philosopher before his exaltation,

books of that age,—a statement which has been erroneously interpreted as importing that all his progress in the art of writing consisted merely in these ineffectual essays. It can scarcely be doubted, from other circumstances, that he was familiar with this art. The greatest service, however, which Charlemagne rendered to learning, was his munificent patronage of its professors, and the readiness and zeal with which he lent himself to various schemes for its restoration and diffusion. The University of Paris, as is well known, sprang from a seminary which he established in his palace, (hence called the Palatine school,) and in the institution of which his principal adviser and assistant was our countryman, the able and accomplished Alcuin. This school was opened about the year 780, while its projector was yet in the very midst of his wars. While letters, long forgotten both in courts and general society, were thus enjoying the protection of Charlemagne in the West, the famous Haroun Al Raschid (or the Just), whose name the Arabian Nights' Entertainments have måde so familiar to every reader, and whose extensive dominions entitled him to be regarded as Emperor of the East, was affording them equal encouragement in that quarter of the globe. Haroun was himself, indeed, an excellent poet, and distinguished for his proficiency in various branches of learning. But at this time the Moors were very considerably a-head of the nations of Christendom in civilization and the knowledge of the arts. The two great potentates we have mentioned, between whom so large a portion of the earth was divided, are recorded to have corresponded with each other; and in the year 807 an ambassador from the Caliph arrived in France, bringing with him various presents for Charlemagne. Among these was a clepsydra, or water-clock, which excited especial admiration, as a contrivance beyond

anything which ingenuity had yet invented in Europe. Another of Haroun's presents was a set of chess-men, some of which are still preserved in the Royal Library at Paris. Charlemagne reigned from the year 768 to 814, when he died at the age of seventy-one; and Haroun Al Raschid died at the age of forty-seven in 809, after a reign of twenty-three years,

But our own ALFRED, whose extraordinary attainments in learning, made in the latter portion of a short and very busy life, we have already briefly noticed *, sheds a much brighter glory over the ninth century, than Charlemagne and the Caliph Haroun do over the eighth. Alfred was born in the year 849, succeeded to the crown in 871, and his reign extended to the close of the century. Even the unusual lateness of the period at which his acquaintance with books commenced, was but the least of the untoward circumstances with which this wonderful man had to contend in his pursuit of knowledge. Born, as he was, the son of a king, how scanty were the means of education of which he had it in his power to avail himself, compared with those which, in our happier days, are within the reach of the poorest peasant! In that age it demanded the price of a goodly estate to purchase a book; and in England, especially, teachers were so scarce, that Alfred, so long as he continued merely a prince dependent upon his father or his elder brothers, actually seems to have been without the requisite resources to procure their services. Nothing, as his biographer, Asser, informs us, was a more frequent subject of regret with him, than that, during the only time of his life when he had either health or leisure for study, he had thus been left utterly without the means of obtaining instruction. For as soon almost as he had passed his boyhood, he was obliged to engage in active duty as a soldier; and the incessant toils of a military life, in the course * See vol. i. p. 63.,

of which he is recorded to have fought no fewer than fifty battles, as well as to have undergone a succession of hardships and sufferings, under which an ordinary mind would have broken down in despair, consumed not a few of the best of his succeeding years. And even after he succeeded to the throne, when we consider that, in addition to the extensive literary labours which he accomplished, he not only attended to his multifarious public duties with a punctuality that has never been surpassed, but, notwithstanding his harassing bodily ailments, signalized himself by his prowess and dexterity in every manly exercise, we may well ask by what mysterious art did he find time for all this variety of occupation! The answer is, that he found time by never losing it. Time is the only gift or commodity of which every man who lives has just the same share. The passing day is exactly of the same dimensions to each of us, and by no contrivance can any one of us extend its duration by so much as a minute or a 'second. It is not like a sum of money, which we can employ in trade, or put out to interest, and thereby add to or multiply its amount. Its amount is unalterable. We cannot "make it breed;" we cannot even keep it by us. Whether we will or no, we must spend it; and all our power over it, therefore, consists in the manner in which it is spent. Part with it we must; but we may give it either for something, or for nothing. Its mode of escaping from us, however, being very subtle and silent, we are exceedingly apt, because we do not feel it passing out of our hands like so much told coin, to forget that we are parting with it at all; and thus, from mere heedlessness, the precious possession is allowed to flow away as if it were a thing of no value. The first and principal rule, therefore, in regard to the economising and right employment of time, is to habituate ourselves to watch it. Alfred knew this