Besides the sciences above enumerated, some schools, and particularly those of England, taught a certain amount of natural philosophy, very imperfect, if compared with our own larger and more accurate knowledge of these subjects, yet valuable in its way, as directing the mind to a branch of learning where improvement could only be hoped for by patient and persevering observation. Geography, again, though in its infancy, was a favourite study with the Anglo-Saxons, and from none did it receive greater extension than from king Alfred, who added whole chapters to the science as it existed before his time. This, in common with a great many other branches of knowledge, was sometimes taught to tardy scholars by the help of verses. Several versified summaries of grammatical rules and geographical definitions are in existence in very early English, but for the credit of the geographers, I will not say in what quarter of the globe they place the land of Egypt. We have yet to speak, however, of a far more important subject connected with the early monastic schools, the religious training of their pupils, and the sacred studies which they pursued. In nothing, probably, did the ancient system of education differ more widely from our own, than in the amount of vocal prayer in which children were expected to take a part. Of course we must bear in mind when reading of children assisting at all the Canonical Hours of the monastery in which they were educated, that in most cases the children spoken of were those “offered” by their parents and intended for the monastic state. They were the pupils of the interior or claustral schools; and it is probable that those belonging to the exterior school were subject to a less rigorous discipline. Still, in either case, they were children, with the propensities common to all children, whether of the ninth or nineteenth centuries; yet we find nothing to indicate that the choral attendance described by the Anglo-Saxon schoolboy in the dialogues of Ælfric, was found by experience to be excessive. “To-day,” says the boy, “I have done many things; this night, when I heard the knell, I arose from my bed and went to the church and sang Night-song with the brethren; after that we sang the service of All Saints and the morning Lauds; then followed Prime and the Seven Psalms, and the Litanies, and the first Mass; then Tierce, and the Mass of the day; then Sext; and then we ate and drank and went to sleep, and rose again and sang None; and now we are here before thee ready to hear what thou hast to say to us.” “Who awakens you for Night-song?” asks the interlocutor. “Sometimes,” answers the scholar, “I hear the knell, and rise of myself; but ofttimes the master arouseth me with his rod.”