The Story of King Alfred

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D. Appleton, 1901 - 187 pages

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Page 154 - England that there were very few on this side of the Humber who could understand their rituals in English or translate a letter from Latin into English ; and I believe there were not many beyond the Humber. There were so few of them that I cannot remember a single one south of the Thames when I came to the Throne.
Page 168 - On a certain day we were both of us sitting in the king's chamber, talking on all kinds of subjects, as usual, and it happened that I read to him a quotation out of a certain book. He heard it attentively with both his ears, and addressed me with a thoughtful mind, showing me at the same moment a book which he carried in his bosom, wherein the daily courses and psalms, and prayers which he had read in his youth, were written, and he commanded me to write the same quotation in that book.
Page 173 - ... during the frequent wars and other trammels of this present life, the invasions of the pagans, and his own daily infirmities of body, continued to carry on the government, and to exercise hunting in all its branches ; to teach his workers in gold and artificers of all kinds, his falconers, hawkers and dog-keepers; to build houses, majestic and good, beyond all the precedents of his ancestors, by his new mechanical inventions...
Page 144 - Keep ye the Law — be swift in all obedience — Clear the land of evil, drive the road and bridge the ford. Make ye sure to each his own That he reap where he hath sown ; By the peace among Our peoples let men know we serve the Lord!
Page 54 - He was loved by his father and mother, and even by all the people, above all his brothers, and was educated altogether at the court of the king. As he advanced through the years of infancy and youth, his form appeared more comely than that of his brothers; in look, in speech, and in manners he was more graceful than they. His noble nature implanted in him from his cradle a love of wisdom above all things...
Page 151 - But those things which I met with, either of the days of Ine, my kinsman, or of Offa, King of the Mercians, or of JEthelbryht, who first among the English race received baptism, those which seemed to me the Tightest, those I have gathered together, and rejected the others.
Page 100 - Aller, near Athelney, and there king Alfred, receiving him as his son by adoption, raised him. up from the holy laver of baptism on the eighth day, at a royal...
Page 36 - War was no sooner over than the warrior settled down into the farmer, and the home of the peasant churl rose beside the heap of goblinhaunted stones that marked the site of the villa he had burned.
Page 82 - West-Saxons, came to the royal city, called Reading, situated on the south bank of the Thames, in the district called Berkshire ; and there, on the third day after their arrival, their earls, with great part of the army, scoured the country for plunder...

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