So, then, it was in fulfilment of a religious vow that King Alfred cast about to discover how he might accurately measure out his time, and his horn lanthorns were but the means he hit on to help him how to give the half of his service of mind and body, day and night, to God. Truly a vow worthy of a Christian hero, and right faithfully and heroically kept. Of course, in the time thus consecrated to God, he included those hours he devoted to study, for this with him was a religious exercise. How, indeed, he contrived to secure his eight hours a day of prayer and reading, is a mystery of the same nature with those marvellous facts which we meet with in the lives of the saints, whose days and nights seem to have had forty-eight hours in them, if we measure them by the amount of prayer and work they accomplished during their course. Alfred, whilst thus disposing of his time by vow, had, as it might seem, no time to himself. However, he made the most of what with most men are idle moments, and when not actually engaged in business was always reading or hearing others read. In his chamber he always had a book open before him, and never travelled without carrying his books with him. The attainment of wisdom, both human and Divine, was his absorbing desire; and Asser, after speaking of his incomparable affability and cheerfulness with others, and the great love and honour he showed to all those whom he drew around him, as well foreigners as natives, and his exceeding tenderness for his own children, and for the other youths whom he caused to be bred up in his palace, as though they were all members of his own family, goes on to say that he had no real consolation in any of these things, but that day and night he was devoured with one thought, and with what he calls an anxious sadness, which he poured out to his familiar friends; and this was his ceaseless desire that Almighty God would make him skilled in divine wisdom and in the liberal arts; so that he sought for wisdom even as did King Solomon, esteeming it to be preferable to glory and riches, and, like him, found them also together with her; according as it is written, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His justice, and all other things shall be added to you.” This coupling together of divine wisdom and the liberal arts, as equal objects of solicitude, is easily understood when we remember the plan according to which human knowledge was then pursued, always in subordination to that which is divine, and mainly in connection with it. Intellectual pursuits not having yet been set free from their holy servitude to the faith, were not recognised as possessing any peculiar dangers; nay, rather, they seem invariably to have been regarded as something meritorious; and knowledge, far from being preached against as perilous to the soul, was ranked among those better gifts which a good man might earnestly covet.