3. =BÆDA.=--The oldest literature of a nation--the early writings of its childhood--are always poetic; and prose-writings do not appear until the nation has, as it were, grown up. The first English prose-writer was BÆDA--or, as he is generally called, The Venerable Bede. He was born in the year 673. Like Cædmon, our first poet, he was a Northumbrian, and belonged to the monastery of Jarrow-upon-Tyne. His most important writings were in Latin; and the best known of them is an _Ecclesiastical History of the English People_. But the work which makes Bæda our first writer of English prose, is a translation into English of the _Gospel of St John_. It was his last work; and, in fact, he died just after he had dictated the last sentence. This was in the year 735. 4. =KING ALFRED.=--Up to the year 866, Northumbria was the home of learning and literature; and the Northumbrian monks were its loving and diligent cultivators. But the incursions of the Danes, the destruction of the monasteries, and the perpetual danger to life and property arising from the troubled condition of the country, put a stop for some time to study and to letters. The cultivation of English as a book-language reappears, towards the end of the ninth century, in the south of the island. Alfred the Great, king of Wessex, is its great friend and promoter. Winchester was the capital of his kingdom; and it was at Winchester that Alfred and his colleagues laboured at the writing of English books. He invited great scholars from different parts of the world; he set up schools; he himself taught a school in his own court; he translated the Latin manuals of the time into English, and added largely to them from his own materials; he translated also the _History_ of the Venerable Bede; and, most probably, he worked at the _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_, and made it much fuller and more detailed than it had ever been before. He founded schools in the different parts of his kingdom, with the purpose and in the hope that ‘every free-born youth, who has the means, may attend to his book till he can read English writing perfectly.’ Alfred was born in the year 849, and died in 901. His own personal diligence--his unceasing head-work, are well known. He gave eight hours a day to the work of public affairs--of managing the business of his kingdom; eight hours to books and study; and he reserved only eight hours for sleep, meals, exercise, and amusement. The following is a passage from one of King Alfred’s writings: Swa claenë heo waes othfeallen on Angel-cynne, thaet swithe feawa waeran be-heonan Humbre the hira thenunge cuthon understandan on Englisc, ohthe farthon an aerend-gewrit of Ledene on Englisc areccan; and ic wene thaet naht monige be-geondan Humbre naeron.