In consequence of the encouragement given to learning by so many of its bishops, Utrecht became the fashionable place of education, and it had grown a sort of custom with the German sovereigns to send their sons thither at an early age. Little Bruno made rapid progress both in Greek and Latin literature; he particularly relished the works of Prudentius, which he learnt by heart; never let himself be disturbed by his noisy companions, and took great care of his books. Indeed, the only thing that ever moved him to anger was the sight of any one negligently handling a book. His reading included something of all sorts; historians, orators, poets and philosophers--nothing came amiss. He had native Greeks to instruct him in their language, and became so proficient in it as afterwards to act as interpreter for his brother to the Greek ambassadors who frequented the German court. With all this he did not neglect the sacred sciences, and a certain Isaac, a Scotch, or rather Irish professor, who taught at Utrecht, spoke of him as not merely a scholar, but a saint. The monk Ditmar, one of his schoolfellows, himself afterwards celebrated in the literary world by his chronicle of the royal house of Saxony, bears witness to the habits of piety which adorned the very childhood of the young prince. “Every morning,” he says, “before he left his room to go to the school, he would be at his prayers, while the rest of us were at play.” A certain tone of exaggeration is not unfrequently indulged in by early writers when extolling the subjects of their biographies as prodigies of every literary excellence, but the descriptions left us of Bruno’s intellectual achievements do not admit of being understood as mere figures of speech. His love of reading was almost a passion. He read everything, “even comedies,” says his biographer, who seems a little scandalised at the fact, but explains that he attended only to the style, and neglected the matter. To complete the picture of Bruno’s school-days, it must be added that he was an excellent manager of his time, and always made the most of his morning hours, a good habit he retained through life. I will say nothing of his early career as the reformer of Lauresheim Abbey; he was still young when his brother Otho succeeded to the throne, and at once summoned Bruno to court, charging him with the task of erecting there a Palatine academy, after the model of that of Charlemagne. Nothing was better suited to Bruno’s wishes and capacity, and he began at once to teach the entire curriculum of the liberal arts to a crowd of noble pupils. Whatever was most beautiful in the historians and poets of Greece or Rome, he made known to his disciples, and not content with the labour entailed on him by his own lectures, he did not allow the professors whom he chose to assist him to commence theirs till he had previously conferred with them on the subjects they were about to explain.