His chief design in rebuilding the monasteries was to restore the schools. The country had fallen so low in learning that there was hardly a single priest who could translate the Church Service into Saxon, or could understand the words he sang. Alfred sent abroad for scholars: he made his Religious House not only a place for the retreat of pious men and women, but also the home—the only possible home—of learning, and the seat of schools. It is long since we have regarded a monastery as a seat of learning, or the proper place for a school. Go back to Alfred’s time and consider what a monastery meant in a land still full of violence: in which morals had been lost: justice trampled down: learning destroyed: no schools or teachers left: the monastery stood as an example and a reminder of self-restraint: peace: and order: a life of industry and such works as the most ignorant must acknowledge to be good: where the poor and the sick were received and cared for: the young were taught: and the old sheltered. It was the Life which the monastery Rule professed; the aim rather than any lower standards accepted by the monks: which made a monastery in that age like a beacon steadily and brightly burning, so that the people had always before their eyes a reminder of the self-governed life. Most of us would be very unwilling to see the monastery again become a necessity of the national life: yet we must admit that in the ninth century Alfred had no more powerful weapon for the maintenance of a religious standard than the monastery. In the cause of education, indeed, Alfred was before his age, and even before our age. He desired universal education. At his Court he provided instructors for his children and the children of the nobles. They learned to read and write, they studied their own language and its poetry: they learned Latin: and they learned what were called the “liberal sciences,” among them the art of music. But he thought also of the poorer class. “My desire,” he says, “is that all the freeborn youths of my people may persevere in learning until they can perfectly read the English Scriptures.” Unhappily he was unable to carry out this wish. Only in our own days has been at last attempted the dream of the Saxon King—the extension of education to the whole people. One more aspect of Alfred’s foresight. He endeavoured to remove the separation of his island from the rest of the world: he connected his people with the civilisation of Western Europe by encouraging scholars and men of learning, workers in gold, and craftsmen of all kinds, to come over: he created commercial relations with foreign countries: a merchant who made three voyages to the Mediterranean he ennobled: he sent an embassy every year to Rome: he sent an embassy as far as India: he brought to bear upon the somewhat sluggish minds of his people the imagination and the curiosity which would hereafter engender a spirit of enterprise to which no other nation can offer a parallel.