may give it either for something or for nothing. Its mode of escaping from us, however, being very subtile 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 economising 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 of 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 favourable. 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 on 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 the 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 intertwine with the martial laurels that already bound his brow the more honourable wreath of literary distinction.—CRAIK's ‘Pursuit of Knowledge.'

1. Haroun Alraschid, one of the successors of Mohammed, is celebrated for his patronage of science and letters.

THE Saxons were divided into three orders of men; the noble, the free, and the servile. The nobles were called thanes, and were of two kinds, the principal and inferior thanes. The latter

seem to have had some dependence on the former, as the former had on the king, but of what nature is uncertain. The lower freemen among the Saxons were denominated ceorles, and were chiefly employed in husbandry-whence a husbandman and ceorle became synonymous terms. They farmed the lands of the nobility or higher orders, and appear to have been removable at pleasure. But the slaves or villeins were by much the most numerous class of the community; and being the property of their masters, were incapable of holding any property of themselves. They were of two kinds; household slaves, after the manner of the ancients: and rustic slaves, who were sold or transferred like cattle with the soil. The long wars between the Saxons and Britains, and afterwards between the different princes of the heptarchy, seem to have been the cause of the disproportionate number of these unhappy men; for prisoners taken in battle were reduced to slavery by the laws of war, and entirely at the disposal of their masters. The higher nobility and dignified clergy among the Anglo-Saxons possessed a criminal jurisdiction within their own territories, and could punish without appeal such as they judged worthy of death.

This was a dangerous privilege, and liable to the greatest abuse. But although the Anglo-Saxon government seems at last to have become in some measure aristocratical, there were still considerable remains of the ancient democracy. All the freeholders assembled twice a-year in the county court, or shiregemot, to receive appeals from the inferior courts-a practice well calculated for the preservation of general liberty, and for restraining the exorbitant power of the nobles. In these courts were decided all causes, ecclesiastical as well as civil, the bishop and alderman, or earl, presiding over them. The case was determined by a majority of voices, without much pleading, formality, or delay; the bishop and earl having no further authority than to keep order among the freeholders, and offer advice.

Though it should be granted, therefore, that the Whittenagemot was composed entirely of the greater thanes and dignified clergy, yet in a government where few taxes were imposed by the legislature, and few statutes enacted; where the nation was less governed by laws than by customs, which allowed much latitude of interpretation, the county courts, where all the freeholders were admitted, and which regulated the daily occurrences of life, form a wide basis for freedom. The criminal laws of the AngloSaxons, as of most barbarous nations, were far from being severe; a compensation in money being sufficient for murder of any species, and for the lives of persons of any rank, including the

king and the primate, whose head, by the laws of Kent, was estimated at a higher rate than that of the king. The prices of all kinds of wounds were also settled; and he who was detected in adultery with his neighbour's wife was ordered by the laws of Ethelbert to pay him a fine, and buy him another wife. The punishments for robbery were various, but none of them capital. If any person could track his stolen cattle into another's ground, the owner of the ground was obliged to show their tracks out of it, or pay the value of the cattle. But if the punishments for crimes among the Anglo-Saxons were remarkable, their pretended proofs were no less so.

When any controversy about a fact was too intricate for the ignorant judges to unravel, they had recourse to what they called the judgment of God; or, in other words, to chance. Their modes of consulting that blind divinity were various, but the most common was the ordeal. This method of trial was practised either by boiling water or red-hot iron. The water or iron was consecrated by prayers, masses, fasting, and exorcisms; after which the person accused either took up with his bare hand a stone sunk in the water to à certain depth, or carried the iron to a particular distance. The hand was immediately wrapped up and the covering sealed for three days; and if, on examining it, there appeared no marks of burning or scalding, the person accused was pronounced innocent; if otherwise, he was declared guilty. The same kind of proof, or others equally extravagant, prevailed among all nations of the continent; and money, in like manner, was in every country the atonement for guilt, both in a civil and ecclesiastical sense.-RUSSELL'S ' History of Modern Europe.'

BETWEEN the age of Charlemagne and that of the Crusades,' a revolution had taken place among the Spaniards, the Normans, and the French, which was gradually extending to the rest of Europe. The service of the infantry was degraded to the plebeians; the cavalry formed the strength of the armies, and the honourable name of miles, or soldier, was confined to the gentlemen who served on horseback, and were invested with the character of knighthood. The dukes and counts, who had usurped

the rights of sovereignty, divided the provinces among their faithful barons; the barons distributed among their vassals the fiefs or benefices of their jurisdiction; and these military tenants, the peers of each other and of their lord, composed the noble or equestrian order, which disdained to conceive the peasant or burgher as of the same species with themselves.

The dignity of their birth was preserved by pure and equal alliances; their sons alone, who could produce four quarters or lines of ancestry, without spot or reproach, might legally pretend to the honour of knighthood, but a valiant plebeian was sometimes enriched and ennobled by the sword, and became the father of a new race. A single knight could impart, according to his judgment, the character which he received; and the warlike sovereigns of Europe derived more glory from this personal distinction, than from the lustre of their diadem. This ceremony, of which some traces may be found in Tacitus and the woods of Germany, was in its origin simple and profane; the candidate, after some previous trial, was invested with a sword and spurs, and his cheek or shoulder was touched with a slight blow, as an emblem of the last affront which it was lawful for him to endure.

But superstition mingled in every public and private action of life; in the holy wars it sanctified the profession of arms, and the order of chivalry was assimilated in its rights and privileges to the sacred orders of priesthood. The bath and white garment of the novice were an indecent copy of the regeneration of baptism; his sword, which he offered on the altar, was blessed by the ministers of religion; his solemn reception was preceded by fasts and vigils; and he was created a knight in the name of God, of St. George, and of St. Michael the archangel. He swore to accomplish the duties of his profession; and education, example, and the public opinion, were the inviolable guardians of his oath.

As the champion of God and the ladies (I blush to unite such discordant names) he devoted himself to speak the truth, to maintain the right, to protect the distressed, to practise courtesy -a virtue less familiar to the ancients-to pursue the infidels, to despise the allurements of ease and safety, and to vindicate in every perilous adventure the honour of his character. The abuse of the same spirit provoked the illiterate knight to disdain the arts of industry and peace,-to esteem himself the sole judge and avenger of his own injuries-and proudly to neglect the laws of civil society and military discipline. Yet the benefits of this institution, to refine the temper of barbarians, and to infuse some principles of faith, justice, and humanity, were strongly felt and