Children (he thought) should be taught to read English, and this elementary stage of education should be common to all of free birth. For the sons of those who could afford to prolong the education of their children, Latin studies should follow, and such boys should be trained for the higher offices. Here the English basis of education is propounded as a course which was dictated by necessity; but if ever it should be demonstrated that this course is absolutely the best, the credit of having been the first to open the right path must not on that account be denied to King Alfred. In the good old times, Wessex had been far behind Northumbria in the culture of the classics, but this had led to a fuller development of the vernacular, and Alfred found his mother tongue not inadequate to the occasion, and large specimens of Latin literature were rendered in West Saxon, and thus it happened that the dialect of Wessex became to the after literature of England what the Attic dialect was to the literature of Greece. The king’s letter to the bishops begins thus:— ÐEOS BÔC SCEAL TO WIOGORA CEASTRE THIS BOOK IS TO GO TO WORCESTER Alfred, king, commandeth to greet Wærferth, bishop, with his words in loving and friendly wise: and I would have you informed that it has often come into my remembrance, what wise men there formerly were among the Angle race, both of the sacred orders and the secular; and how happy times those were throughout the Angle race; and how the kings who had the government of the folk in those days obeyed God and His messengers; and they on the one hand maintained their peace and their customs and their authority within their borders, while at the same time they spread their territory outwards; and how it then went well with them both in war and in wisdom; and likewise the sacred orders, how earnest they were, as well about teaching as about learning, and about all the services that they owed to God; and how people from abroad came to this land for wisdom and instruction; and how we now should have to get them abroad if we were going to have them. So clean was it fallen away in the Angle race, that there were very few on this side Humber who would know how to render their services in English, or just read off an epistle out of Latin into English; and I wean that not many would be on the other side Humber. So few of them were there that I cannot think of so much as a single one south of Thames when I took to the realm. God Almighty be thanked that we have now any teachers in office.