himself to various schemes for its restoration and diffusion. The University of Paris, as is well known, sprang from a seminary which he established in his palace, (hence called the Palatine school,) and in the institution of which his principal adviser and assistant was the able and accomplished Alcuin. This school was opened about the year 780, while its projector was yet in the very midst of his wars. While letters, long forgotten both in courts and general society, were thus enjoying the protection of Charlemagne in the West, the famous Haroun Al Raschid, (or the Just,) whose name, the Arabian Nights' Entertainments have made so familiar to every reader, and whose extensive dominions, entitled him to be regarded as Emperor of the East, was affording them equal encouragement, in that quarter of the globe. Haroun was himself, indeed, an excellent poet, and distinguished for his proficiency in various branches of learning. But at this time, the Moors were very considerably ahead of the nations of Christendom, in civilization and the knowledge of the arts. The two great potentates we have mentioned, between whom so large a portion of the earth was divided, are recorded to have corresponded with each other; and in the year 807, an ambassador from the Caliph arrived in France, bringing with him various presents for Charlemagne. Among these, was a clepsydra, or water-clock, which excited especial admiration, as a contrivance beyond any thing which ingenuity had yet invented in Europe. Another of Haroun's presents was a set of chess-men, some of which are still preserved in the Royal. Library at Paris. Charlemagne reigned from the year 768 to 814, when he died at the age of seventy-one; and Haroun Al Raschid died at the age of forty-seven, in 809, after a reign of twenty-three years.

But ALFRED, of England, whose extraordinary attainments in learning, made in the latter portion of a short and very busy life, we have already briefly noticed,* sheds a much brighter glory, over the ninth century, than Charlemagne and the Caliph Haroun do, over the eighth. Alfred was born, in the year 849, succeeded to the crown,

*See vol. i. p. 66.

in 871, and his reign, extended to the close of the century. Even the unusual lateness of the period at which his acquaintance with books commenced, was but the least. of the untoward circumstances with which this wonderful man had to contend, in his pursuit of knowledge. Born, as he was, the son of a king, how scanty were the means of education, of which he had it in his power to avail himself, compared with those which, in our happier days, are within the reach of the poorest peasant! In that age, it demanded the price of a goodly estate to purchase a book; and in England, especially, teachers were so scarce, that Alfred, so long as he continued merely a prince dependent upon his father or his elder brothers, actually seems to have been without the requisite resources to procure their services. Nothing, as his biographer, Asser, informs us, was a more frequent subject of regret with him, than that during the only time of his life when he had either health or leisure for study, he had thus been left utterly without the means of obtaining instruction. For, as soon almost as he had passed his boyhood, he was obliged to engage in active duty, as a soldier; and the incessant toils of a military life, in the course of which, he is recorded to have fought no fewer than fifty battles, as well as to have undergone a succession of hardships and sufferings, under which an ordinary mind would have broken down in despair, consumed not a few of the best of his succeeding years.

And, even after he succeeded to the throne, when we consider that, in addition to the extensive literary labors which he accomplished, he not only attended to his multifarious public duties with a punctuality that has never been surpassed, but, notwithstanding his harassing bodily ailments, signalized himself by his prowess and dexterity in every manly exercise, we may well ask, by what mysterious art did he find time for all this variety of occupation! The answer is, that he found time, by never losing it. Time is the only gift or commodity, of which every man who lives has just the same share. The passing day is exactly of the same dimensions to each of us, and by no contrivance, can any one of us

extend its duration by so much as a minute or a second. It is not like a sum of money, which we can employ in trade, or put out at interest, and thereby add to, or multiply, its amount. Its amount is unalterable. We cannot

"make it breed;" we cannot even keep it by us. Whether we will or no, we must spend it; and all our power over it, therefore, consists in the manner in which it is spent. Part with it, we must; but we may give it either for something, or for nothing. Its mode of escaping from us, however, being very subtle and silent, we are exceedingly apt, because we do not feel it passing out of our hands, like so much told coin, to forget that we are parting with it, at all; and thus, from mere heedlessness, the precious possession is allowed to flow away, as if it were a thing of no value. The first and principal rule, therefore, in regard to the economizing and right employment of time, is to habituate ourselves to watch it.

Alfred knew this well; and we may here relate the method he adopted to measure the passing hours, in his want of those more artificial timepieces which we possess. Having made his chaplains, as Asser in his simple narrative informs us, procure the necessary quantity of wax, he ordered six candles to be prepared, each twelve inches long, which he had found would together burn for four and twenty hours. Having marked the inches on them, therefore, he ordered that they should be lighted in succession, and each three inches that were consumed, he considered as recording the flight of an hour. "But finding," continues the historian, "that the candles burned away more quickly at one time than at another, on account of the rushing violence of the winds, which sometimes would blow night and day without intermission, through the doors and windows, the numerous chinks in the walls, or the slender covering of the tents, he bethought him how he might prevent this inconvenience, and having contrived artfully and wisely, he ordered that a lantern should be fairly fashioned of wood and horn; for white horn, when scraped thin, allows the light to pass through even like glass. The candle, therefore, being placed in the lantern, thus wonderfully constructed, as we have said,

of wood and horn, was both protected from the wind, and shone during the night as luminously without as within." Every heart will acknowledge that there is something not a little interesting, and even touching, in these homely details, which paint to us, so graphically, the poor accommodations of every kind, in the midst of which Alfred had to pursue his studies, and the humble matters with which his great mind was often obliged to occupy itself in contriving the means of gratifying its noble aspirations. This illustrious man, indeed, seems almost to have lifted himself quite above the tyranny of circumstances; realizing, in the most disadvantageous, nearly all that could be expected or desired in the most favorable. The difficulties, with which he had to contend, in truth, formed the very soil, out of which no small portion of his greatness grew. Among kings, he is not only the Great, but the very greatest. If we look merely to his zeal and services, in behalf of literature, it is impossible to name any royal personage, that can be compared with him, either in classic antiquity or in modern times. A genuine love for letters, and a proficiency in them, in the possessor of a throne, is worthy of our admiration, in whatever age or country, the phenomenon may be recorded to have been witnessed; because it must always be considered as a striking example of a triumph over seductions that are generally, of all others, found the most difficult to resist, and have, accordingly, been of all others the most seldom resisted. But of the other learned kings, of whom we read in history, some were literary in a literary age; others, naturally unfitted for the more active duties of their station, took to philosophy, or pedantry, as a refuge from insignificance; some had caught the love and the habit of study before they had mounted a throne, or had dreamed of mounting one; above all, most, if not all of them, had been carefully educated and trained to letters in their youth. But it is told only of Alfred, that without an example to look to, without even the advantages of the very scantiest education, in an unlearned age, and a still more unlearned country, he, who had been only a soldier, from his youth, upwards, withdrew himself, of his own accord,

from the rude and merely sensual enjoyments of all his predecessors and all his contemporaries, to devote himself to intellectual pursuits, and to seek to interwine with the martial laurels that already bound his brow, the more honorable wreath of literary distinction.

Of the royal personages, who have distinguished themselves by their love and cultivation of letters, the most eminent, next to Alfred, is JAMES I., of Scotland, whose entitled the King's Quhair,' composed by him poem, during his imprisonment in Windsor Castle, we have already mentioned.* James was born in 1394, but having been taken prisoner, by the king of England, in 1405, was detained in that country, mostly in close confinement, till his thirtieth year; after which, having been allowed to return to Scotland, he reigned for thirteen years, and was at last cruelly assassinated in the Carthusian monastery, at Perth, on the 20th of February, 1437, by a faction of his nobles, whom his attempted reforms dissatisfied. Literature had been the principal solace of James's long imprisonment, and he brought with him, to the throne, the tastes which he had acquired in his exile. He certainly contributed very essentially, even during his short reign, to promote the civilization of his native country. Nothing can exceed the warmth of the admiration, with which all the old historians speak of his genius and accomplishments, and of the effect which his example had in diffusing among his people that spirit of literary cultivation, and love for all elegant and intellectual accomplishments, by which he was himself distinguished. was a proficient, we are told, in the Latin language, and some authorities add, even in the Greek, although this last statement must be regarded as apocryphal, all things considered. His mastery over his native tongue, was, at all events, his most remarkable endowment. The songs and other metrical pieces, which he composed in the Scottish dialect, long continued to be the delight of all classes of his countrymen; and to their influence we are, in all probability, to trace much of that universal sensibility to poetry, which has ever since distinguished

* See vol. i. p. 216,

He