life, some, perhaps, will not be equally familiar with them as they stand in their original garb, from which the religious element has been carefully pared away by each successive story-teller. I shall, therefore, make no apology for introducing so threadbare a subject as King Alfred and his horn lanthorns, persuaded that comparatively few of those who have heard of him as their inventor, have ever dreamt that they had any sort of connection with the spiritual side of our great king’s character. Here, then, is the story as it appears in the pages of Asser. After telling us of the many undertakings happily brought to completion by the king, and his incessant activity in the government of the realm, he continues: “Having set all these things in order, mindful of that saying of Holy Writ, ‘Let him who would give an alms begin with himself,’ he reflected on what he could offer to God of the service of his own mind and body, wishing to consecrate these to God as well as his exterior riches. So he promised, as far as infirmity, possibility, and means would permit, willingly and with all his might to give to God one-half of the service of his mind and body, both by day and night. However, as he could not any way reckon the night hours, by reason of the darkness, nor equally divide those of the day, because of the frequent rain and clouds, he began to think how he might, with God’s help, observe the tenor of his vow even until death. At last he hit on a useful and clever device. He ordered his chaplains to provide a sufficient quantity of wax, which when brought he caused to be weighed out in pennyweights. When seventy-two pennyweights of it had been measured out, he ordered his chaplains to make thereof six candles, all of equal dimensions, each candle being marked out into twelve inches of length. This being done the six candles were burnt day and night without intermission through the twenty-four hours before the holy relics of many saints, which he took with him wherever he went. But as sometimes the candle would not burn through a whole night and day up to the same hour at which they had been lighted the preceding evening (doubtless because of the violence of the winds, which often blew through the doors and windows of the church, or through the many chinks in the walls and roofs, and their hangings), and as thus they burnt out more quickly than they should have done, Alfred began to consider how he might prevent this effect of the wind, and caused a lanthorn to be beautifully constructed of wood and cow’s horn (for white cows’ horns carefully scraped are no less transparent than glass), and the candle, being placed in this lanthorn, shone as brightly without as it did within, unimpeded by the blasts of wind.”[117]