up his pen. He was the first Saxon king who attempted to conquer his enemies without killing them--who offered them bread instead of the sword. He was much wiser than many legislators in our own enlightened times. He gave Godwin and his Danes land and seed, bade them work, and live honestly and peacefully; they had felt the weight of his arm before-time, and, for a long period after, they disturbed not his study again. What benefit was it to Alfred to whiten with human bones a land which he knew it would be better to cultivate?--there was room enough for them all, so he sat down again to enrich his own mind. We can readily imagine that he never took up his sword without a feeling of reluctance--that he thought a man could not be worse employed than in slaying his fellow men. Alfred was England's earliest reformer. When his nobles found that he had determined to find them no more fighting, they took to reading and writing, for time hung heavily upon their hands. He then allowed them to share in his councils, and they began to make laws for the living, instead of slaying, and then fixing a price to be paid to the kindred of the dead for the murder they had committed. A lingering and painful disease, which had for years baffled the skill of all his physicians--the constant inroads of the northmen, who were ever keeping the country in a state of alarm--a dearth of kindred spirits to cheer him in his intellectual labours--prevented not the persevering king from struggling onward, in his toilsome journey, in search of knowledge and truth. Bede, with the exception of a single poem, had composed all his works in Latin; and, with scarcely an exception, there was no production of any merit that Alfred could obtain, at that period, but what was written in the same language; and when he looked round amongst all the thousands he ruled over, not one could be found, until Asser appeared, who was capable of instructing him, or who could translate into the Saxon tongue the knowledge for which he thirsted. He sent in quest of literary men to Rome, to France, to Ireland; wherever they could be found, he despatched messengers with presents to intreat and tempt them to visit his court. When they arrived, he made them equals and friends--he promoted them to the highest offices in his government--he valued them higher than all his treasures of gold and silver--by day and night they were his inseparable companions. He listened to the passages they translated, stopped them from time to time, and made notes of the most striking thoughts, and, in an after day, in numerous instances, he extended the crude ideas of the ancient writers, and threw in a thousand beautiful illustrations of his own, and such as were never dreamed of by the original authors; they reflect his own thoughts and feelings; and while we peruse them we know that we are drinking in the wisdom of Alfred. In his translation of Orosius he made a great portion of the geography