=Educational Improvement in the Cathedral, Monastic, and Parish Schools.=--With the coöperation of Alcuin, Charlemagne also did everything in his power to increase facilities and improve standards in the existing types of schools. In 787 he issued an educational ‘capitulary’ or decree to the bishops and abbots, “urging diligence in the pursuit of learning and the selection of teachers for this work who are able, willing, and zealous to learn themselves and to teach others.” Two years later he wrote a more urgent capitulary to the bishops and abbots, in which he specified the subjects to be taught in the cathedral and monastic schools and the care to be taken in teaching them. Schools seem to have been everywhere established or revived in the various cathedrals, monasteries, and villages, and the instruction in several places became famous. All these schools came to offer at least a complete elementary course, and some added considerable work in higher education. Reading, writing, computation, singing, and the Scriptures were taught first, but, beyond this, instruction in grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic was often given, and at the more noted cathedral and monastic schools the _quadrivium_ also appeared in the course. The schools in the villages, under the care of the parish priests, taught only the rudiments, the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the Psalms. Tuition was free in all schools for those intending to become monks or priests, but for the higher work a small fee was sometimes paid by the laity. It seems to have been generally intended that education should be gratuitous and open to all. A letter of the Bishop of Orleans required it of his clergy; and through a capitulary in 802 Charlemagne strove to make it compulsory. [Sidenote: After retirement Alcuin’s influence continued, but he became narrow.] =Alcuin’s Educational Work at Tours.=--After fourteen years of strenuous service, Alcuin retired from the active headship of the educational system to the abbacy of the monastery at Tours. But even here his educational work did not cease. He soon established a model house of learning and education, whither flocked the most brilliant youths in the empire, and since they rapidly became prominent as teachers and churchmen, his influence upon the schools remained fully as marked as before. He also wrote a number of educational works, mostly on the seven liberal arts, and had a large correspondence about education with kings and the higher clergy. Alcuin, however, was by nature conservative, and with his retirement he became decidedly set and narrow. His fear of dialectic and the more advanced views of certain Irish scholars is almost ludicrous, and his repudiation of the classic poets, even his former favorite, Vergil, is pathetic. [Sidenote: His pupils retained his broader spirit.]