The king wrote a Handbook, or commonplace book, of Latin extracts, which he translated into his own native tongue; and later he translated, or caused to be translated, the "Pastoral Care" of Pope Gregory; the very popular work on "Consolation" by Boëthius, a philosopher who was slain about 524; the "Church History" of Bede; and a kind of "History of the World" by Orosius, a Christian writer of the fifth century. Of these books, the "History" by Bede was of the greatest value for Englishmen; the "Consolations" of Boëthius are at least as consolatory as any others, and were long popular; while whoever reads Orosius will learn many things, though he will learn them wrong, about the whole history of the human race. Still, the Anglo-Saxon reader became aware of the elements of geography, and of the existence of the powers of ancient Assyria, Egypt, Crete, and Athens, while much space is devoted to the empire of the Amazons.[1] "It is shameful," says Orosius, nobly, "to speak of such a state of things, when such miserable women, _and so foreign_, had subdued the bravest men of all this earth," a conquest which the women repeated, he says, during the Peloponnesian war! When Orosius reaches Roman history he is much more copious, and not so amusingly incorrect. Alfred, as a rule, paraphrased rather than translated his originals, omitting and adding at pleasure, and amplifying the geography of the North, by information received through Otthere and Wulfstan, contemporary voyagers. He found learning on its deathbed and he restored and revived it, saving erudition from the natural contempt of men by the royal example of a great statesman, sportsman, and warrior. It was plain to the world that, in spite of the human tendency to despise books, learning was not merely an affair for shavelings in cloisters, for the great king himself loved reading and writing. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.