n the 8th Century, Baeda (the venerable Beda), another Northumbrian,
who was monk, scholar, and writer, wrote the first History of his
people and his country, and discoursed upon astronomy, physics,
meteorology, medicine, and philosophy. These were but the early
lispings of Science; but they held the germs of the "British
Association" and of the "Royal Society;" for as English poetry has its
roots in Caedmon, so is English intellectual life rooted in Baeda.

The culmination of this new era was in Alfred, who came to the throne
of his grandfather, Egbert, in 871.

He brought the highest ideals of the duties of a King, a broad,
statesmanlike grasp of conditions, an unsullied heart, and a clear,
strong intelligence, with unusual inclination toward an intellectual
life.

Few Kings have better deserved the title of "great." With him began
the first conception of National law. He prepared a code for the
administration of justice in his Kingdom, which was prefaced by the Ten
Commandments, and ended with the Golden Rule; while in his leisure
hours he gave {28} coherence and form to the literature of the time.
Taking the writings of Caedmon, Baeda, Pope Gregory, and Boethius;
translating, editing, commentating, and adding his own to the views of
others upon a wide range of subjects.

He was indeed the father not alone of a legal system in England, but of
her culture and literature besides. The people of Wantage, his native
town, did well, in 1849, to celebrate the one-thousandth anniversary of
the birth of the great King Alfred.

But a condition of decadence was in progress in England, which Alfred's
wise reign was powerless to arrest, and which his greatness may even
have tended to hasten. The distance between the king and the people
had widened from a mere step to a gulf. When the Saxon kings began to
be clothed with a mysterious dignity as "the Lord's anointed," the
people were correspondingly degraded; and the degradation of this
class, in which the true strength of England consisted, bore unhappy
but natural fruits.

A slave or "unfree" class had come with {29} the Teutons from their
native land. This small element had for centuries now been swelled by
captives taken in war, and by accessions through misery, poverty, and
debt, which drove men to sell themselves and families and wear the
collar of servitude. The slave was not under the lash; but he was a
mere chattel, having no more part than cattle (from whom