ng of Wessex, who united under his rule all the Saxon kingdoms. The
mother of Alfred was Osburgha, a German princess of extraordinary force
of character. From her he received, at the age of four, the first
rudiments of education, and learned to sing those Saxon ballads which
he afterwards recited with so much effect in the Danish camp. At the
age of five Alfred was sent to Rome, probably to be educated, where he
remained two years, visiting on his return the court of Charles the
Bald,--the centre of culture in Western Europe. The celebrated Hincmar,
Archbishop of Rheims,--the greatest churchman of the age,--was the most
influential minister of the king; at whose table also sat John Erigena,
then engaged in a controversy with Gotteschalk, the German monk, about
the presence of Christ in the eucharist,--the earliest notable
theological controversy after the Patristic age. Alfred was too young to
take an interest in this profound discussion; but he may perhaps have
received an intellectual impulse from his visit to Rome and Paris, which
affected his whole subsequent life.

About this time his father, over sixty years of age, married a French
princess of the name of Judith, only fourteen years of age,--even in
that rude age a great scandal, which nearly resulted in his
dethronement. He lived but two years longer; and his youthful widow, to
the still greater scandal of the realm and Church, married her late
husband's eldest son, Ethelbald, who inherited the crown. It was through
this woman, and her subsequent husband Baldwin, called _Bras de Fer_,
Count of Flanders, that the English kings, since the Conqueror, trace
their descent from Alfred and Charlemagne; for her son, the second
Count of Flanders, married Elfrida, the daughter of Alfred. From this
union descended the Conqueror's wife Matilda. Thus the present royal
family of England can trace a direct descent through William the
Conqueror, Alfred, and Charlemagne, and is allied by blood, remotely
indeed, with most of the reigning princes of Europe.

The three elder brothers of Alfred reigned successively over Wessex,--to
whom all England owned allegiance. It was during their short reigns that
the great invasion of the Danes took place, which reduced the whole
island to desolation and misery. These Danes were of the same stock as
the Saxons, but more enterprising and bold. It seems that they drove the
Saxons before them, as the Saxons, three hundred years before, had
driv