[Footnote 10: The Muezzin is the Mahometan official who announces to the faithful the hour of prayer. Three times in the day and twice at night he goes up to the balcony of one of the minarets of the mosque, and chants the call. It is a simple but solemn melody, which floats down from the height of his turret upon the sleeping or bustling city with vast impressiveness, and receives immediate and universal obedience.] ALFRED THE GREAT By SIR J. BERNARD BURKE, LL.D. (849-901) [Illustration: Family scene. [TN]] No name in English history is so popular, and so justly popular, as that of Alfred the Great. That he taught his people to defend themselves and defeat their enemies, is the least of his many claims to our grateful admiration; he did much more than this; he gave the first impulse to the spirit of civilization, and taught a horde of wild barbarians that there were other and worthier pursuits than war or the pleasures of the table. In fact, he was one of those highly gifted men that would seem to be raised up especially by Providence to meet certain emergencies, or to advance the career of nations. Such was the hero, so beautifully recorded by the pen of Edmund Burke, and of whose history we now purpose to give a slight sketch for the amusement of those who might turn in weariness from a more ample record. Alfred the Great was born at Wantage, in Berkshire, in the year 849, one of the most dreary and calamitous periods of English chronicle. He was the youngest son of Ethelwulph, a mild and virtuous prince, but full of a timid piety which utterly disqualified him for the circumstances in which he was placed. According to the historian Asser, young Alfred, being of a more comely person and sweeter disposition than his elder brothers, became the favorite of both his parents, and was sent by them to Rome, while yet a child, in order that he might be anointed king by the Pope himself. But though the feeble piety of Ethelwulph showed this especial instance of regard for his son, he altogether neglected his education, and the young prince in his twelfth year had not yet learned to read or write. Fortunately for himself, and still more so for the kingdom he was afterward to govern, he possessed a mind too active to be entirely subdued by the most unfavorable circumstances. If he could not read for himself, he nevertheless loved to listen to the rude but inspiring strains of Saxon poetry when recited by others, and had he not been a hero and a statesman, he might probably have been a poet. At length, as the old chronicler tells us--"on a certain day, his mother was shewing him and his brothers a Saxon book of poetry, which she held in her hand, and said, 'Whichever of you shall the soonest learn this volume, shall have it for his own.'" Thus stimulated, Alfred bent himself to the task with all that steady ardor which so strongly