"Hear him but reason on divinity,
And, all-admiring, with an inward wish,
You would desire the king were made a prelate;
Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs,
You would say—it hath been all-in-all his study:
List his discourse of war, and you shall hear
A fearful battle rendered you in music."
Shakspere.
We have seen the shadow of this great king pass, through the clouds of sorrow and suffering, into the glory and immortality which still shed their lustre around his memory, after the darkness of nearly a thousand winters has gathered and passed over his grave. Even the gloomy gates of death could not extinguish, in the volumed blackness they enclose, the trailing splendour which accompanied his setting, without leaving behind a summer twilight, over a land where before there was nothing but darkness to mark the departing day. Upon a sky dim, and unsprinkled with the golden letters of light, Alfred first rose, the evening star of English history. From his first appearance a brightness marked his course; even in the morning of life, he "flamed upon the forehead of the sky." Instead of the dull, cold, leaden grey, which announced the appearance of other kings, his crowned head broke the stormy rack, in a true splendour that befitted such majesty, and though dimmed for awhile, every observant eye could see that it was the sun which hung behind the clouds.
In childhood, long before his step-mother, Judith, had taught him to read, his chief delight was in committing to memory the poems which the Saxon bards chaunted in his father's court; and who can doubt but that many a wandering minstrel descended from the ancient Cymry, struck his harp within the Saxon halls, and made the boyish heart of Alfred thrill again, as he heard the praises of those early British heroes sung, whose bare breasts and sharp swords were the bold bulwarks that so long withstood the mailed legions which the haughty emperor of Rome had sent, swarming over our own island shores. In this rude school was Alfred first taught that the names of the good, the great, and the brave can never die; that valour and virtue were immortal; and he resolved to emulate the deeds of those whose memories time can never obliterate; by whose names we number the footsteps of eternity, when marble and monumental brass have crumbled into dust. It was at the Castaly of the Muses, which then but trickled from a rude, grey Saxon font, where Alfred first drank in the draught that gave him immortality. Eager for knowledge, he looked around in vain for any one to instruct him; he had not a clergyman about him who could translate the prayers he read in Latin, into Saxon; until poor old Asser came from Wales, he could not find in his whole court a scholar equal to himself. His nobles could hunt and fight; his brothers could do no more: they lived and died, and their names would never have been remembered had they not chanced to have been kings. The mind of Alfred was fashioned in another mould; accident had made him a king, and he resolved to become a man, to think and act worthy of a being who bore on his brow God's image—to be something more than the mere heir to a hollow crown and the lands of Wessex; so he threw aside his sword, which he knew a thousand arms could wield as well as his own, and took up his pen. He was the first Saxon king who attempted to conquer his enemies without killing them—who offered them bread instead of the sword. He was much wiser than many legislators in our own enlightened times. He gave Godwin and his Danes land and seed, bade them work, and live honestly and peacefully; they had felt the weight of his arm before-time, and, for a long period after, they disturbed not his study again. What benefit was it to Alfred to whiten with human bones a land which he knew it would be better to cultivate?—there was room enough for them all, so he sat down again to enrich his own mind. We can readily imagine that he never took up his sword without a feeling of reluctance—that he thought a man could not be worse employed than in slaying his fellow men. Alfred was England's earliest reformer. When his nobles found that he had determined to find them no more fighting, they took to reading and writing, for time hung heavily upon their hands. He then allowed them to share in his councils, and they began to make laws for the living, instead of slaying, and then fixing a price to be paid to the kindred of the dead for the murder they had committed.
A lingering and painful disease, which had for years baffled the skill of all his physicians—the constant inroads of the northmen, who were ever keeping the country in a state of alarm—a dearth of kindred spirits to cheer him in his intellectual labours—prevented not the persevering king from struggling onward, in his toilsome journey, in search of knowledge and truth. Bede, with the exception of a single poem, had composed all his works in Latin; and, with scarcely an exception, there was no production of any merit that Alfred could obtain, at that period, but what was written in the same language; and when he looked round amongst all the thousands he ruled over, not one could be found, until Asser appeared, who was capable of instructing him, or who could translate into the Saxon tongue the knowledge for which he thirsted. He sent in quest of literary men to Rome, to France, to Ireland; wherever they could be found, he despatched messengers with presents to intreat and tempt them to visit his court. When they arrived, he made them equals and friends—he promoted them to the highest offices in his government—he valued them higher than all his treasures of gold and silver—by day and night they were his inseparable companions. He listened to the passages they translated, stopped them from time to time, and made notes of the most striking thoughts, and, in an after day, in numerous instances, he extended the crude ideas of the ancient writers, and threw in a thousand beautiful illustrations of his own, and such as were never dreamed of by the original authors; they reflect his own thoughts and feelings; and while we peruse them we know that we are drinking in the wisdom of Alfred. In his translation of Orosius he made a great portion of the geography and history of the world, as it was then understood, familiar to his countrymen; by his translation of Bede he gave them an insight into the records of their own land, and showed his nobles how indifferently their predecessors had conducted the government. By his Bœthius he instilled into their minds many moral axioms, imparted to them his own thoughts and feelings, and slowly raised them to that high intellectual station to which he had, by his own exertions, attained; for though he still ever soared high above them, yet there were eminences up which they never could have climbed unless by his aid. He found his nobles but little better than the northern barbarians, and he left them wise and thinking men. He made a green and flowery place of what had been before but a wide and weedy wilderness. He divided his attendants into three bodies, and when one party had served him a month, they returned home, and were succeeded by another; for it was not in the nature of Alfred to compel any of his attendants to neglect their own private affairs while serving him. By this means he but claimed their services during four months in the year, the remainder of the time they were allowed to dedicate to their own domestic matters. He divided his income into separate portions, appropriating each part to a particular purpose—first, he allotted a portion to his warriors and attendants; the next allotment was expended in building, in the improvement of which he collected many eminent architects from different nations; the third he expended in the relief of foreigners; no matter from what country they came, they left not the court of Alfred empty-handed: the remainder of his revenue was dedicated to religious purposes, to the support of the monasteries he had built, the schools he had erected, and of the various churches throughout the whole of the dominions. Out of this division the larger portion was religiously dedicated to the relief of the poor. Not only his treasures, but his time, was also equally divided; he but allowed one-third for rest and retirement, and within it scrupulously included the whole that he thought necessary to be consumed in partaking of his meals. The second eight hours he devoted wholly to the affairs of his kingdom, to the meeting of his council, to the assembling of his witena-gemot, audiences, plans of protection for the repelling of invasions, and for the better working of the great machinery which he had set in motion to better the condition of his subjects and weaken the power of his enemies. The remaining third of his time he appropriated to study and his religious duties. It was in this division, doubtless the happiest of all, that Asser and Grimbald read and translated while he listened, and in the little note-book which Asser had made him, he put down such thoughts as made the greatest impression on his mind. Alfred had neither clock nor chronometer with which to measure out the hours, only the sun and moving shadow by which he could mete out time, and they could neither guide him on the dull, cloudy day, nor the dark night. To overcome this difficulty, and mark the divisions of the twenty-four hours, he had wax candles made, twelve inches in length, each of which was marked at equal distances, and although the time taken up in replacing and re-lighting them would scarcely serve to mark accurately the lapse of minutes, yet they were so equally made, that six of them, with but little variation, used in succession, lasted out the twenty-four hours. To guard against the casualties of winds and draughts, he inclosed his candles in thin, white, transparent horn, and this result led to the invention of lanterns; and thus he measured time, which to him was the most valuable of all earthly treasures, for he considered his life as a trust held for the benefit of his people; and the knowledge which he himself accumulated he felt it a sacred duty to impart to others. From what was then considered the remotest corners of the earth, he despatched emissaries to gather information; he sent an embassy to India, and had messengers continually passing to and from Rome. The Danes, whom he had permitted to settle down peaceably in his dominions, he placed upon the same footing as the Saxons, giving to them equal laws, and punishing the criminals of both nations with the same impartial rigour, which many historians have considered to be somewhat too severe. Justice was then but little understood; and when the judges came to such decisions as Alfred considered unfair to the party injured, he occupied the tribunal, and had the matter brought before him, and according to his own judgment decided the case. He caused one of his own judges, named Cadwine, to be hanged, for having condemned a man to death without the consent of the whole jury. Freberne he also ordered to be executed, for sentencing one Harpin to suffer death, when the jury were undecided in their verdict; for when there was a doubt, Alfred concluded it was but just to save the accused. He would neither permit the jury to return an unjust verdict, nor the judge to influence their decision; but where there was doubt and difficulty to contend against, he brought the whole weight of his own clear, unbiassed intellect to bear upon the subject.
Without breaking down the warlike spirit of the people, he by a salutary law checked the thirst of personal revenge, permitting no man to slay his enemy in secret, not even if he knew that that enemy was seated at home beside his own hearth, he was not allowed to fight with him until he had publicly demanded redress. If the body of a murdered man was found, the penalty, which, considering the value of money in those times, was heavy, fell upon the whole hundred or tything in which the dead body was discovered. By this means, the innocent had the powerful motive of self-interest to induce them to give up the murderer. Rude and primitive as such a system may at first appear, these laws were well adapted to the spirit of the barbarous age in which he lived, when a pagan Dane considered it a meritorious work to slay a Saxon Christian, and the latter thought that he was doing Heaven service when he sent the spoiler of its monasteries, and the slayer of its priests, to revel in the halls of the blood-stained gods he worshipped. Elders were appointed over each hundred, and were answerable for the conduct of all who belonged to them. If a crime was committed, the roll was called over, and suspicion naturally fell upon the missing man who had fled. No other hundred could register his name until he had dwelt a given time amongst them; and through this strict system of espionage, pardonable only in such turbulent times, the land, as it were, was engirded with a continuous chain, not a link of which could be broken without the gap becoming visible. Alfred not only introduced the decalogue into his laws, but so adapted the Mosaic code to the habits of the age in which he lived, as to render it as effective amongst the Anglo-Saxons as it had been with the Israelites of old. His witena-gemot, or assembly of nobles, or parliament, or by whatever name we choose to designate the council of the land, was called upon to give its consent to these enactments, before they were put into operation, and such clauses as it objected to, Alfred blotted out from his Dom-boc. He first drew the bold outline of our present mode of government; and limned with his hand, though rudely, the grand form of our glorious constitution. He was proverbially known amongst his subjects by the title of the "Truth-teller;" and it was a saying during his reign, that golden bracelets might be hung upon the landmarks beside the common highways without a fear of their removal, such a vigorous watch did the law keep.
In the character of Alfred was embodied all the elements which the poet, the dramatist, and the novelist attempt to throw around their most perfect ideas of a hero. He was a warrior, a statesman, and a scholar, and as perfect in each of these capacities as if he had spent his whole life in the battle-field, had dedicated his days and nights to law and politics, or been only a fond dreamer amongst books in the flowery fields of literature. He would have taken the lead in any age as the commander of an army; have either risen to the dignity of a chancellor or a premier in civil government, or have stood first in the high and ambitious rank of authorship. In him were beautifully blended courage and tenderness, perseverance and patience; justice which would have been stern, but for the softening quality of mercy, high-mindedness, and humbleness, and, above all, a universal love for his fellow men, not disfigured by the weak partiality of unworthy favouritism. He found England in a state of despondency, raised and cheered her, and then elevated her to a much higher station than that from which she had fallen. But for Alfred the Great, England would have been a desert, and never have recovered from the destructive fires and desolating ravages of the Danes. His name will be revered until time shall be no more.
[CHAPTER XXIV.]
EDWARD THE ELDER.
"Awake remembrance of these valiant dead,
And with your puissant arm renew their feats;
You are their heir, you sit upon their throne;
The blood and courage that renowned them
Runs in your veins.——
All do expect that you should rouse yourself,
As did the former lions of your blood."—Shakspere.