solved, whenever he could-that is, whenever he was not on a campaign-to give to the service of God half the day. It is not quite clear what he meant by the service of God. To modern ideas,

the daily business of king, judge, and commanderin-chief may be, and should be, a far nobler and higher form of service than a form of prayer in a church, while one can hardly believe that the king could possibly devote twelve hours out of the

twenty-four to prayer and meditation. Suppose the half day means the half of the time left after deducting the hours of sleep, of food and refreshment, and of the daily routine. This method of calculation would give three or four hours a day at the outside to the prayers which were intended for the benefit of his own soul.

It is, however, to some such division that Asser ascribes the invention of Alfred's method of measuring time when the sun was not apparent. He made six wax candles, of equal length, each of which was divided by lines into twelve equal parts. These candles he kept lighted day and night before the precious relics which he carried with him everywhere.

"Sometimes, when they would not continue burning a whole day and night, till the same hour that they were lighted the preceding evening, from the violence of the wind, which blew day and night without intermission through the doors and windows of the churches, the fissures of the divisions, the plankings, or the wall, or the thin canvas of the tents, they then unavoidably burned out and finished the course before the appointed time; the king, therefore, considered by what means he might shut out the wind, and so by a useful and cunning invention, he ordered a lantern to be beautifully constructed of wood and white ox-horn, which, when skilfully planed till it is thin, is no less transparent than a vessel of glass. This lantern, therefore, was wonderfully made of wood and horn, as we before said, and by night a candle was put into it, which shone as brightly without as within, and was not extinguished by the wind; for the opening of the lantern was also closed up, according to the king's command, by a door of horn.

"By this contrivance, then, six candles, lighted in succession, lasted four and twenty hours, neither more nor less, and, when those were extinguished, others were lighted,"

The wind whistling through the cracks of the wooden walls makes one fear that even the Royal Palace was not absolutely a place of comfort. But far down into the later ages the draughts were the cause of continual toothache and cold, so that the men wore their caps with hanging sides in the house as well as out of it.

He gave half his time-in whatever way he understood it-to the service of God: he also gave half his income. We must understand by this half of what was left after the expenses of the government. Alfred divided the whole into two parts. The first part was divided into three, of which one division went to defray the expenses of the court-even the court of a Wessex king was maintained with much ceremony, hospitality, and expense; the second division went to his craftsmen, of whom he maintained a great many; the third to encourage the visits of foreigners. The other half was destined to the service of God, namely, one fourth part for the poor, one fourth for the two monasteries of Athelney and Shaftesbury, one fourth for his schools, and one fourth for other monasteries. Such was the practical side of the religion of King Alfred.

CHAPTER V.

ALFRED AS LAW-GIVER.

"WE were all despoiled," said Alfred in his book, "by the heathen folk." It was a time when words were used with strict reference to

128

their meaning and without exaggeration, save by ecclesiastics. "We were all despoiled." The whole land was "despoiled" of everything. The old things were swept away-the venerable customs, the laws, the instructions of the people, with their churches, their religion, their towns and their settlements. It would seem as if there has never been a wreck so complete as that of Saxon England after the irruption of the Danes. Among other things, the laws were swept away and quickly forgotten. Imagine, if you can, the sudden removal from the streets of the policeman and of the authority which stands behind him, the closing of all the courts, criminal and civil, the burning of all the law books, silence as regards any laws, even the Ten Commandments. How long would the memory of the old laws remain with us? At present we are hedged round on every side, and we do not feel the restrictions. "This and this ye shall not do." We grow up in the midst of prohibitions; we are unconscious of them. How long should we be unconscious of them if they were removed? How long should we recognize the obligation neither to steal nor to murder when we might steal and murder as much as we pleased, subject to the condition that the possessor would defend his property and his life by arms? This was exactly the situation in Wessex. The policeman was gone, the judge was gone, the prison and the executioner was gone; nothing was left. Alfred had to undertake the task of restoring laws as well as religion. to his country. The people had to be lifted up again to the old standard, spiritual, moral, and intellectual-a gigantic task, even though the the population was num

bered by thousands instead of millions. government was paralyzed; the king's treasury was empty; the towns and settlements were in ruins.

Alfred began the restoration, so far as the laws were concerned, by issuing what we should now call a new and revised edition of the old laws. Observe that an enthusiast, a crank, a king who desired to impress his own views upon the people, one who believed that a new constitution could be invented and imposed upon the ignorant mass, would have started afresh with everything new; Alfred would have drawn up a body of laws based upon Roman law, as that known to the scholars, his friends. I do not believe that he was ever tempted in this direction at all. On the other hand, he seems to have understood the great fact, the cardinal fact, that if laws are to possess an abiding influence, if they are to form and direct the mind, to govern the conduct, to be the laws of the people for the people, then they must be the growth of centuries and generations; they must embody and represent the national characteristics. Now, successful institutions — those which the people adopt-possess a double distinction; they lead and they represent. They lead the minds of the young, and they represent the minds of the old; they preserve the national character, and they are the outcome of the national character. Now, the laws and customs of all the peoples in Saxon England-Saxons, Jutes, and Angles-were similar because they had the same origin; they were also different because they had developed without reference to each other. They had grown with the people, and