ALFRED THE GREAT, OF ENGLAND. By DAVID HUME.

[Hereditary King of the West Saxons, and Over-king of all England, born in 849 A.D., died 901. Alfred was the true founder of the English monarchy, and one of the greatest monarchs in English history. In his reign the English became essentially one people, and the Danish invaders then settled in England were incorporated with the Saxons. Alfred was not only a great soldier and statesman, but was distinguished for intellectual greatness in the pursuit of arts and letters. Under his patronage the Saxon court became the source of civilizing influences that extended over all Northern and Western Europe.]

The merit of this prince both in private and public life may with advantage be set in opposition to that of any monarch or citizen which the annals of any age or nation can present to us. He seems, indeed, to be the model of that perfect character which, under the denomination of sage or wise man, philosophers have been fond of delineating rather as a fiction of their own imagination than in hopes of seeing it existing, so happily were all his virtues tempered together, so justly were they blended, and so powerfully did each prevent the other from exceeding its proper boundaries. He knew how to reconcile the most enterprising spirit with the coolest moderation, the most obstinate perseverance with the easiest flexibility; the most severe justice with the gentlest lenity; the greatest vigor in commanding with the most perfect affability of deportment; the highest capacity and inclination for science with the most shining talents for action. His civil and his military virtues are almost equally the objects of our admiration, excepting only that the former being more rare among princes as well as more useful seem chiefly to challenge our applause.

Nature, also, as if desirous that so bright a production of her skill should be set in the fairest light, had bestowed on him every bodily accomplishment—vigor of limbs, dignity of air and shape, with a pleasant, engaging, and open countenance. Fortune alone by throwing him into that barbarous age deprived him of historians worthy to transmit his fame to posterity; and we wish to see him delineated in more lively colors, and with more peculiar strokes, that we may at least perceive some of those specks and blemishes from which as a man it is impossible he could be entirely exempted.

The better to guide the magistrates in the administration of justice, Alfred framed a body of laws, which, though now lost, served long as the basis of English jurisprudence, and is generally deemed the origin of what is denominated the Common Law. The similarity of these institutions to the customs of the ancient Germans, to the practice of the other Northern conquerors, and to the Saxon laws during the heptarchy, prevents us from regarding Alfred as the sole author of this plan of government, and leads us rather to think that, like a wise man, he contented himself with reforming, extending, and executing the institutions which he found previously established.

But on the whole such success attended his legislation that everything bore suddenly a new face in England. Robberies and iniquities of all kinds were repressed by the punishment or reformation of criminals; and so exact was the general police that Alfred, it is said, hung up by way of bravado golden bracelets near the highways, and no man dared touch them. Yet, amid these rigors of justice, this great prince preserved the most sacred regard to the liberties of the people; and it is a memorable sentiment preserved in his will that it was just the English should ever remain as free as their own thoughts.

As good morals and knowledge are almost inseparable in every age, though not in every individual, the care of Alfred for the encouragement of learning among his subjects was another useful branch of his legislation, and tended to reclaim the English from their former dissolute and ferocious manners. But the king was guided in this pursuit less by political views than by his natural bent and propensity toward letters.

When he came to the throne he found the nation sunk into the grossest ignorance and barbarism, proceeding from the continued disorders in the government and from the ravages of the Danes. The monasteries were destroyed, the monks butchered or dispersed, their libraries burned, and thus the only seats of erudition in those ages were totally subverted. Alfred himself complains that on his accession he knew not one person south of the Thames who could so much as interpret the Latin service, and very few in the northern parts who had reached even that pitch of erudition. But this prince invited over the most celebrated scholars from all parts of Europe; he established schools everywhere for the instruction of his people; he founded—at least repaired—the University of Oxford, and endowed it with many privileges, revenues, and immunities. He gave preferment both in Church and state to such only as made some proficiency in knowledge.

But the most effectual expedient adopted by Alfred for the encouragement of learning was his own example, and the constant assiduity with which, notwithstanding the multiplicity and urgency of his affairs, he employed himself in the pursuit of knowledge. He usually divided his time into three equal portions—one was employed in sleep, and the refection of his body by diet and exercise; another, in the dispatch of business; a third, in study and devotion. And that he might more exactly measure the hours, he made use of burning tapers of equal length, which he fixed in lanterns—an expedient suited to that rude age, when the geometry of dialing and the mechanism of clocks and watches were entirely unknown. And by such a regular distribution of his time, though he often labored under great bodily infirmities, this martial hero who fought in person fifty-six battles by sea and land, was able, during a life of no extraordinary length, to acquire more knowledge, and even to compose more books, than most studious men, though blessed with greatest leisure and application, have in more fortunate ages made the object of their uninterrupted industry. And he deemed it no wise derogatory from his other great characters of sovereign, legislator, warrior, and politician thus to lead the way to his people in the pursuit of literature.

He invited from all quarters industrious foreigners to repeople his country, which had been desolated by the ravages of the Danes. He introduced and encouraged manufactures of all kinds, and no inventor or improver of any ingenious art did he suffer to go unrewarded. He prompted men of activity to betake themselves to navigation, to push commerce into the most remote countries, and to acquire riches by propagating industry among their fellow-citizens. He set apart a seventh portion of his own revenue for maintaining a number of workmen, whom he constantly employed in rebuilding the ruined cities, castles, palaces, and monasteries. Even the elegancies of life were brought to him from the Mediterranean and the Indies; and his subjects, by seeing those productions of the peaceful arts, were taught to respect the virtues of justice and industry, from which alone they could rise. Both living and dead Alfred was regarded by foreigners, no less than by his own subjects, as the greatest prince after Charlemagne that appeared in Europe during several ages, and as one of the wisest and best that had ever adorned the annals of any nation.