stoms, and then, suggesting a few
improvements, submitted them to the approval of his Witenagemot, the
assembly of his bishops and warriors. He knew also that men's conduct
is influenced more by what they think than by what they are commanded
to do. His whole land was steeped in ignorance. The monasteries had
been the schools of learning; and many of them had been sacked by the
Danes, their books burnt, and their inmates scattered, whilst others
were deserted, ceasing to receive new inmates because the first duty
of Englishmen had been to defend their homes rather than to devote
themselves to a life of piety. Latin was the language in which the
services of the Church were read, and in which books like Bede's
Ecclesiastical History were written. Without a knowledge of Latin
there could be no intercourse with the learned men of the Continent,
who used that language still amongst themselves. Yet when the Danes
departed from AElfred's kingdom, there were but very few priests who
could read a page of Latin. AElfred did his best to remedy the evil. He
called learned men to him wherever they could be found. Some of these
were English; others, like Asser, who wrote AElfred's life, were Welsh;
others again were Germans from beyond the sea. Yet AElfred was not
content. It was a great thing that there should be again schools in
England for those who could write and speak Latin, the language of the
learned, but his heart yearned for those who could not speak anything
but their own native tongue. He set himself to be the teacher of
these. He himself translated Latin books for them, with the object of
imparting knowledge, not of giving, as a modern translator would do,
the exact sense of the author. When, therefore, he knew anything which
was not in the books, but which he thought it good for Englishmen to
read, he added it to his translation. Even with this he was not
content. The books of Latin writers which he translated taught men
about the history and geography of the Continent. They taught nothing
about the history of England itself, of the deeds and words of the men
who had ruled the English nation. That these things might not be
forgotten, he bade his learned men bring together all that was known
of the history of his people since the day when they first landed as
pirates on the coast of Kent. The Chronicle, as it is called, is the
earliest history which any European nation possesses in its own
tongue. Yet, after all, such a m