But on the whole such success attended his legislation that everything bore suddenly a new face in England. Robberies and iniquities of all kinds were repressed by the punishment or reformation of criminals; and so exact was the general police that Alfred, it is said, hung up by way of bravado golden bracelets near the highways, and no man dared touch them. Yet, amid these rigors of justice, this great prince preserved the most sacred regard to the liberties of the people; and it is a memorable sentiment preserved in his will that it was just the English should ever remain as free as their own thoughts. As good morals and knowledge are almost inseparable in every age, though not in every individual, the care of Alfred for the encouragement of learning among his subjects was another useful branch of his legislation, and tended to reclaim the English from their former dissolute and ferocious manners. But the king was guided in this pursuit less by political views than by his natural bent and propensity toward letters. When he came to the throne he found the nation sunk into the grossest ignorance and barbarism, proceeding from the continued disorders in the government and from the ravages of the Danes. The monasteries were destroyed, the monks butchered or dispersed, their libraries burned, and thus the only seats of erudition in those ages were totally subverted. Alfred himself complains that on his accession he knew not one person south of the Thames who could so much as interpret the Latin service, and very few in the northern parts who had reached even that pitch of erudition. But this prince invited over the most celebrated scholars from all parts of Europe; he established schools everywhere for the instruction of his people; he founded--at least repaired--the University of Oxford, and endowed it with many privileges, revenues, and immunities. He gave preferment both in Church and state to such only as made some proficiency in knowledge.