and the crown lands, and leaving Wessex to Ethelbald. The men of Kent had made no such law as to women, and there Judith reigned as queen with her husband for two years.

Then the old King died, and, to the horror and scandal of the whole realm, Judith his widow was in the same year married to Ethelbald, "contrary to God's prohibition and the dignity of a Christian, contrary also to the custom of all the Pagans." This Ethelbald, notwithstanding the scandal and horror, carries the matter with a high hand his own way. bold, bad man, for whose speedy removal we may be thankful, in view of the times which are so soon coming on his country.

A

Let us here finish the strange story of this princess, through whom all our sovereigns since William the Conqueror trace their descent from the Emperor Charlemagne. She lived in England for yet two years, till the death of Ethelbald, in 860, when, selling all her possessions here, she went back to her father's court. From thence she eloped, in defiance of her father, but with the connivance of her young brother Lewis, with Baldwin Bras-de-fer, a Flemish noble. The young couple had to journey to Rome to get their marriage sanctioned, and make their peace with Pope Nicholas I., to whom the enraged Charles had denounced her and her lover. Judith, however, seems to have had as little trouble with his Holiness as with all other men, and returned with his absolution, and letters of commendation to her father. Charles thereupon made her husband Count of

Flanders, and gave him all the country between the Scheld, the Sambre, and the sea, "that he might be the bulwark of the Frank kingdom against the Northmen."

This trust Baldwin faithfully performed, building the fortress of Bruges, and ruling Flanders manfully for many years. And our Alfred, though, we may be sure, much shocked in early years at the doings of his young stepmother, must have shared the fate of the rest of hist sex at last, for we find him giving his daughter Elfrida as wife to Baldwin, second Count of Flanders, the eldest son of Judith. From this Baldwin the Second, and Alfred's daughter Elfrida, the Conqueror's wife Matilda came, through whom our sovereigns trace their descent from Alfred the Great. And so the figure of fair, frail, fascinating Judith flits across English history in those old years, the woman who next to his own mother must have had most influence on our great king.

CHAPTER IV.

CNIHTHOOD.

“Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?
Even by ruling himself after Thy word."

THE question of questions this, at the most critical time in his life for every child of Adam who ever grew to manhood on the face of our planet; and so far as human experience has yet gone, the answer of answers. Other answers have been, indeed, forthcoming at all times, and never surely in greater number or stranger guise than at the present time: "Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?" Even by ruling himself in the faith "that human life will become more beautiful and more noble in the future than in the past." This will be found enough "to stimulate the forces of the will, and purify the soul from base passion," urge, with a zeal and ability of which every Christian must desire to speak with deep respect, more than one school of our nineteenth century moralists.

"Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?" Even by ruling himself on the faith, "that it is probable that God exists, and that death is not the end of life;" or again, "that this is the only

world of which we have any knowledge at all." Either of these creeds, says the philosopher of the clubs, if held distinctly as a dogma and consistently acted on, will be found "capable of producing practical results on an astonishing scale." So one would think, but scarcely in the direction of personal holiness, or energy. Meantime, the answer of the Hebrew psalmist, 3,000 years old, or thereabouts, has gone straight to the heart of many generations, and I take it will scarcely care to make way for any solution likely to occur to modern science or philosophy. Yes, he who has the word of the living God to rule himself by who can fall back on the strength of Him who has had the victory over the world, the flesh, and the devil-may even in this strange disjointed time of ours carry his manhood pure and unsullied through the death-grips to which he must come with "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life." He who will take the world, the flesh, and the devil by the throat in his own strength, will find them shrewd wrestlers. escape with the stain of the sure to get, and can rise up still a man, though beaten and shamed, to meet the same foes in new shapes in his later years. New shapes, and ever more vile, as the years run on. "Three sorts of men my soul hateth," says the son of Sirach, "a poor man that is proud, a rich man that is a liar, and an old adulterer that doateth."

Well for him if he falls which he is too

We may believe the Gospel history to be a fable, but who amongst us can deny the fact, that each son of

"the

man has to go forth into the wilderness-for us, wilderness of the wide world in an atheistic century"and there do battle with the tempter as soon as the whisper has come in his ear: "Thou too art a man; cat freely. All these things will I give thee."

Amongst the Anglo-Saxons the period between childhood and manhood was called "cnihthood," the word "cniht" signifying both a youth and a servant. The living connexion between cnihthood and service was never more faithfully illustrated than by the young Saxon prince, though he had already lost the father to whom alone on earth his service was due. The young nobles of Wessex of Alfred's time for the most part learnt to run, leap, wrestle, and hunt, and were much given to horse-racing and the use of arms; but beyond this, we know from Alfred himself, that neither their fathers or they had much care to go. Doubtless, however, here and there were clerical men, like Bishop Wilfrid in the previous century, to whom nobles sent their sons to be taught by him; and when full-grown, "to be dedicated to God if they should choose it, or otherwise to be presented to the king in full armour." It is not probable that Alfred ever had the advantage of such tuition, as he makes no mention of it himself. We do not know exactly how or when he learnt to read or write, but the story of how he met the young man's foes in the heyday of his youth and strength comes to us in Bishop Asser's life, precisely enough, though in the language and clothing of a far-off time, with which we are little in sympathy. It seems better, however, to leave it