not in every individual; the care of Alfred for the
encouragement of learning among his subjects was another useful branch
of his legislation, and tended to reclaim the English from their
former dissolute and ferocious manners: but the king was guided in
this pursuit, less by political views, than by his natural bent and
propensity towards letters. When he came to the throne, he found the
nation sunk into the grossest ignorance and barbarism, proceeding from
the continued disorders in the government, and from the ravages of the
Danes: the monasteries were destroyed, the monks butchered or
dispersed, their libraries burnt; and thus the only seats of erudition
in those ages were totally subverted. Alfred himself complains, that
on his accession he knew not one person, south of the Thames, who
could so much as interpret the Latin service; and very few in the
northern parts, who had reached even that pitch of erudition. But
this prince invited over the most celebrated scholars from all parts
of Europe; he established schools every where for the instruction of
his people; he founded, at least repaired, the university of Oxford,
and endowed it with many privileges, revenues, and immunities; he
enjoined by law all freeholders possessed of two hides [u] of land or
more, to send their children to school for their instruction; he gave
preferment both in church and state to such only as had made some
proficiency in knowledge: and by all these expedients he had the
satisfaction, before his death, to see a great change in the face of
affairs; and in a work of his, which is still extant, he congratulates
himself on the progress which learning, under his patronage, had
already made in England.
[FN [u] A hide contained land sufficient to employ one plough. See H.
Hunt. lib. 6. in A. D. 1008. Annal. Waverl. in A.D. 1083. Gervase of
Tilbury says, it commonly contained about 100 acres.]

But the most effectual expedient, employed by Alfred, for the
encouragement of learning, was his own example, and the constant
assiduity with which, notwithstanding the multiplicity and urgency of
his affairs, he employed himself in the pursuits of knowledge. He
usually divided his time into three equal portions: one was employed
in sleep, and the refection of his body by diet and exercise; another
in the despatch of business; a third in study and devotion; and that
he might more exactly measure the hours, he made use of burning tapers
of equal le