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V.

In some years he made donations to the churches CHAP. and clergy in Wales, Cornwall, France, Bretagne, Northumbria, and Ireland, according to his ability.'

ALFRED was an exact economist of his time, without which indeed nothing great can be achieved. He had not those heralds of its lapse which we can make so minute and exact; but he was sensible, that to do all he projected, he must divide his day, and appropriate every part.

THE darkness of the night afforded him no natural means of measuring the progress of the revolving globe; and as clouds and rain often concealed the sun, which is the only chronometer of uncultivated man, he was compelled to frame some method of marking his day into regular intervals. 15 Mechanics were then so little known, either in theory or practice, that Alfred had not the aid of this science, from which most of our comforts, both domestic and political, have arisen. He used a simple expedient: his chaplains, by his orders, procured wax, and he ordered seventy-two denarii of it to be made into six equal candles, each candle to be twelve inches long, which were separately marked. These candles, successively used, lasted through the whole twenty-four hours, and of course every inch marked the lapse of

14 Asser, 67.

15 The king of France had an advantage in this respect above Alfred; for, in 807, Charlemagne was presented by the king of Persia with a superb clock. "Horologium ex orichalco, arte mechanica mirifice compositum, in quo duodecim horarum cursus ad clepsydram vertebatur, cum totidem æreis pilulis, quæ ad completionem horarum decidebant et casu suo subjectum sibi cymbalum tinnire faciebant; additis in eodem ejusdem numeri equitibus qui per 12 fenestras completis horis exhibant et impulsu egressionis suæ totidem fenestras quæ prius erant apertæ, claudebant." Annales Car. Mag. Astron. p. 35. Reuberi.

BOOK twenty minutes; but sometimes the wind rushing V. in through the windows and doors, the numerous

chinks of the walls, or the slender covering of the tents, consumed the candles with undue celerity. To cure this evil, which confused his calculation, he thought skilfully and wisely, says Asser "7; and the result of this skill and wisdom was the invention of lanterns. He found that the white horn became pellucid like glass, and Iwith this and wood a case for his candle was (mirabiliter) admirably made. By these schemes, which our clocks and watches make us deride, he obtained what he wanted, an exact admeasurement of the lapse of time. We have not a correct detail of its appropriation. Asser's general statement, that he consecrated half his time to God', gives no distinct idea, because we find, that his liberal mind, in the distribution of his revenue, thought that to apportion money for a school was devoting it to the Supreme. Malmsbury's account is, that one third of the natural day and night was given to sleep and refreshment; one third to the affairs of his kingdom; and one third to those duties which he considered as sacred. This indistinct statement cannot now be amplified.

19

He had been fond of hunting and sporting; but as he became older, we may infer, from his paraphrase of Boetius's conditional assertion, that if a man rode for his health, he did not desire the motion but its effect, that our afflicted king did not take this exercise for pleasure. He says:

16 It is of a royal palace that he is thus speaking.
17 Consilio que artificiose atque sapienter invento, p.
18 Asser, 67.

68.

19 Malmsbury, 45.

"No man rides out because it pleases him to ride; but he rides because by the excursion he earns something. Some earn by it that they shall be healthier; some that they shall be more active; and some because they would come to some other place which they desire to be at." 20

CHAP.

V.

ONE of the principal features of Alfred's useful His piety. life, was his earnest piety. From the gross and illiberal superstitions which have been connected with religion, and from the frauds and hypocrisy which have been sometimes practised under her venerable name, piety, although one of the native flowers of the uncorrupted heart, has lost much of its influence upon mankind. Philosophy has justly taught us to discredit priestcraft; and the dread of the evils which this has produced, has greatly alienated many from religion itself. Whenever a mischief tends to accompany a blessing, the good is undervalued till the evil can be removed.

BUT although this state of opinion results, not unnaturally, from some part of the former experience of mankind, it is not a decision which wisdom and knowledge will ultimately sanction. Religion is as necessary to the happiness and improvement of man, and to the healthful continuance and expected melioration of society, as superstition, artifice, tyranny, and ignorance are injurious and debasing; and of all religions, none can be compared with Christianity, either in intellect, morals, or beneficence. It has raised the kingdoms where it has prevailed, to a proud superiority over the rest of the world; and it has given a beauty, a richness, and an utility to the human character, which we shall in vain look for under any other system. No

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V.

BOOK religion is either in spirit or in precept more adverse to those systems of delusion and selfishness to which it has been perverted, and from which it is ever appealing; none can better claim the support of the wise, and the sympathy of the good.

RELIGION was one of the earliest offsprings of the human intellect, and cannot long be separated from it without certain deterioration to both. As it is the best guide and guardian of mind as well as of virtue, if it be allied with our reason, and enriched with our knowledge, many of the greatest characters of their day have in all ages upheld it. But there are some dispositions to whom it is peculiarly congenial and gratifying; and Alfred was one of that order of intelligence which has delighted in its exercise.

By other men, piety may have been taken up as a mask, or worn as a habit; by Alfred it was applied to its great and proper use; to the correction of immorality, to the advancement of virtue, to the encouragement of knowledge; and to become the asylum of happiness.

ALFRED, like other men, inherited the passions and frailties of mortality: he felt immoral tendencies prevalent in his constitution, and he found that he could not restrain his objectionable desires. With this experience mankind in general rest satisfied: they feel themselves prompted to vicious gratifications: they take the tendencies of nature as their excuse, and they freely indulge.

BUT the mind of Alfred emancipated itself from such sophistry: he disdained to palter with his moral sense he knew that his propensities were immoral; and though a prince, he determined not to be their slave. He found the power of his

V.

reason to be inadequate to subdue them; and he CHAP. therefore had recourse to the aids of religion. His honoured friend assures us, that to protect himself from vice, he rose alone at the first dawn of day, and privately visited churches and their shrines, for the sake of prayer. There, long prostrate, he besought the great moral Legislator to strengthen his good intentions. So sincere was his virtuous determination, that he even implored the dispensation of some affliction which he could support, and which would not, like blindness or leprosy, make him useless and contemptible in society, as an assistant to his virtue. With frequent and earnest devotion, he preferred this request; and when at no long interval the disorder of the ficus. came upon him, he welcomed its occurrence, and converted it to a moral utility, though it attacked him severely. However variously with their present habits, some may appreciate the remedy with which Alfred chose to combat his too ardent passions, we cannot refuse our applause to his magnanimity. His abhorrence of vice, his zeal for practical virtue, would do honour to any private man of the most regular habits: but in a prince who lives in that sphere of society where every object and every associate tempt the passions, and seduce the reason, it was one of those noble exertions of soul which humanity rarely yet displays, and which words cannot adequately applaud.

21

ASSER repeatedly describes his sovereign's religious disposition: "He was accustomed to hear divine service, especially the mass, every day, and to repeat psalms and prayers, and the devotions for

21 Asser, 41, 42.

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