But a half-century of struggle
and bloodshed passed before the victory of Christ over Odin was fully
won.
_KING ALFRED AND THE DANES._
In his royal villa at Chippenham, on the left bank of the gently-flowing
Avon, sat King Alfred, buried in his books. It was the evening of the
6th of January, in the year 878, a thousand years and more backward in
time. The first of English kings to whom a book had a meaning,--and the
last for centuries afterwards,--Alfred, the young monarch, had an
insatiable thirst for knowledge, a thirst then difficult to quell, for
books were almost as rare as gold-mines in that day. When a mere child,
his mother had brought to him and his brothers a handsomely illuminated
book, saying,--
"I will give this to that one of you four princes who first learns to
read."
Alfred won the book; so far as we know, he alone sought to win it, for
the art of reading in those early times was confined to monks, and
disdained by princes. Ignorance lay like a dismal cloud over England,
ignorance as dense as the heart of the Dark Ages knew. In the whole land
the young prince was almost alone in his thirst for knowledge; and when
he made an effort to study Latin, in which language all worthy
literature was then written, we are told that there could not be found
throughout the length and breadth of the land a man competent to teach
him that sealed tongue.
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