The interesting remark in this letter that the messenger from Salzburg to Tours, a distance of some six hundred miles, must go back in six hours is not the only interesting detail. We learn, also, that many letters were lost in the difficulties of the journey. The eyes of the Sassenach of to-day, who rides some forty miles in a Scottish mail-cart in Sutherland, and sees the letters shied out into kailyards and steadings, are opened to the possibilities of loss in primitive methods of letter-carrying. The admirable arrangements of the early Roman empire, for conveyance of men and things, had been thrown into chaos long before Alcuin’s time, and special messengers, or “runners”, were used by important people for the transmission of letters. [Sidenote: Ep. 189. May, 802.] “To Arno. My devotedness is greatly grieved by the unfaithfulness of those whom I have trusted with letters to you. Last year I sent to you on your return from Italy two letters, and I also sent to you other two to meet you on your arrival at the palace [Aachen]. I do not know that any of them reached your presence.” [Sidenote: Ep. 193.] Alcuin wrote to the Emperor Charles in 802, or possibly in 803, begging that he might be allowed to stay quietly at St. Martin’s, Tours. “I am so very weak in body that I am unequal to any more travelling or labour. To speak truth, all the fitness and strength of my body has left me; it has gone, and day by day will be further away; I fear it will never come back to me in this world.” [Sidenote: Ep. 194.] Again, writing to Arno in 802 or 803, he tells him how he longs to see him at St. Martin’s, “not for the sake of your black hair, but for your most sweet eyes and lovable talk.” Though bidden to the palace, where he would have met him, his poor little body was too weak for the journey: he could not go. [Sidenote: Ep. 196. A.D. 802-3.] [Sidenote: Ep. 198. A.D. 802-3.] In another letter to Arno he writes: “I have been summoned to my lord David [Charlemagne], but my bodily weakness prevented my going: the will of God detained me.” We have his letter of excuse to the emperor. He begins with the simile of the aged soldier, unable not only to bear the weight of armour, but even to support his own body. Then he proceeds: “To speak simply, let not the mind of my lord be inflamed against me for my delay; I am not strong enough to come. A more favourable opportunity may occur.” [Sidenote: Ep. 230.] He became more than ever pressing in his entreaties that his friends would pray for him. In seeking for the prayers of others we find him turning to a part of England of which we do not appear to have any other mention in his letters, namely, Norfolk and Suffolk, called then the dioceses of Elmham and Dunwich (see page 159). In like manner, and for a like purpose, he wrote to the brethren of Candida Casa, i. e. Whithorn in Galloway, the following letter:— [Sidenote: Ep. 271. A.D. 804.]