Six hundred pupils gathered about him there, in the old days, to be taught in physics, grammar, rhetoric, music, and I know not what besides. So learned and true was he, that the Pope would have called him to Rome; but he loved better the wooded Tyne banks, and the gray moorlands, and the labors of his own monastery. There he lived out an honest, a plodding, an earnest, and a hopeful life. And as I read the sympathetic story of its end, and of how the old man--his work all done--lifted up a broken voice--on his last day--amidst his scholars, to the _Gloria in Excelsis_--I bethink me of his last eulogist, the young historian, who within a few months only after sketching that tender picture of his great forerunner in the paths of British history, laid down his brilliant pen--his work only half done, and died, away from his home, at Mentone, on the shores of the Mediterranean. _King Alfred._ A half century after the death of Beda began the Danish invasions, under which, monasteries churches schools went down in a flood of blood and fire. As we read of that devastation--the record covering only a half-page of the old Saxon Chronicle (begun after Beda’s time)--it seems an incident; yet the piratic storm, with intermittent fury, stretches over a century and more of ruin. It was stayed effectively for a time when the great Alfred came to full power. I do not deal much in dates: but you should have a positive date for this great English king: a thousand years ago (889) fairly marks the period when he was in the prime of life--superintending, very likely, the building of a British fleet upon the Pool, below London. He was born at Wantage, in Berkshire, a little to the south of the Great Western Railway; and in a glade near to the site of the old Saxon palace, is still shown what is called Alfred’s Well. In the year 1849 his birthday was celebrated, after the lapse of a thousand years--so keen are these British cousins of ours to keep alive all their great memories. And Alfred’s is a memory worth keeping. He had advantages--as we should say--of foreign travel; as a boy he went to Rome, traversing Italy and the Continent. If we could only get a good story of that cross-country trip of his! We know little more than that he came to high honor at Rome, was anointed king there, before yet he had come to royalty at home. He makes also a second visit in company with his father Ethelwolf: and on their return Ethelwolf relieves the tedium of travel by marrying the twelve-year old daughter of Charles the Bald of France. Those were times of extraordinary daring.