proceeded to Friesland, the scene of his first labors, where he suffered martyrdom in 755. This saint was a devoted friend to education, and that portion of the decrees of the council of Cloveshoe, held in 747, in which the subject of learning is treated, is ascribed to his pen. {54} The council ordered that "bishops, abbots, and abbesses do by all means diligently provide that all their people incessantly apply their minds to reading; that boys be brought up in the ecclesiastical schools, so as to be useful to the church of God; and that their masters do not employ them in bodily labor on Sundays." While Germany was being reclaimed from its primitive barbarism, Gaul, which had given so many missionaries to the Western Islands, was not neglected. For more than two hundred years this country, once so fertile in pious men and learned institutions, was the theatre of the most frightful disorders, consequent on domestic wars and foreign invasions. There were but few monasteries surviving, but even these were true to the design of their founders, and in them learning, to use the eloquent remark of the Protestant historian, Guizot, "proscribed and beaten down by the tempest that raged around, took refuge under the shelter of the altar, till happier times should suffer it to appear in the world." But a memorable epoch had arrived in the history of France. In 771 Charlemagne became monarch of all the Franks, and by his extraordinary military successes and political wisdom soon made himself master of the entire continent north of the Pyrenees. But great as were his conquests in the field, his victories in the cause of letters in France were more splendid and far more durable. Under his long and brilliant sway the evils of previous centuries were swept away; churches were restored, monasteries rebuilt, seminaries and schools everywhere opened. Like all great practical men, the Frankish monarch knew admirably well how to choose his assistants when grand ends were to be reached, and in this instance he selected Alcuin of York as his agent in restoring to his dominions religious harmony and Christian education. The result showed the wisdom of his choice, for to no man of that day could so herculean a task be assigned with better hope of its execution. Trained in the schools of York, then among the best in England, he united to a solid judgment profound learning and an energy of mind as untiring as that even of his royal patron. The Palatine school, though in existence previous to the reign of Charlemagne, was placed under the charge of Alcuin, and the emperor and various members of his family became his first and most attentive pupils. It consisted of two distinct parts: one, composed of the royal family and the courtiers, followed the emperor's person; the other necessarily stationary, in which were educated young laymen as well as those intended for the cloister; Charlemagne, himself setting the