Next, that learning might not utterly perish in the ashes of the abbeys and monasteries which the Danes had destroyed (S53), the King, though feeble and suffering, set himself to translate from the Lating the “Universal History of Orosius,” and also Bede’s valuable “Church History of England.”

58.  Alfred’s Navy.

Alfred, however, still had to fight against fresh invasion by the Danes, who continued to make descents upon the coast, and even sailed up the Thames to take London.  The English King constructed a superior class of fast-sailing war vessels from designs made by himself.  With this fleet, which may be regarded as the beginning of the English navy, he fought the enemy on their own element.  He thus effectually checked a series of invasions which, if they had continued, might have reduced the country to barbarism.

59.  Estimate of Alfred’s Reign.

Considered as a whole, Alfred’s reign (871-901) is hte most noteworthy of any in the annals of the early English sovereigns.  It was marked throughout by intelligence and progress.

His life speaks for itself.  The best commentary on it is the fact that, in 1849, the people of Wantage, his native place, celebrated the thousandth anniversary of his birth,—­another proof that “what is excellent, as God lives, is permanent."[1]

[1] R. W. Emerson’s “Poems.”

60.  St. Dunstan’s Three Great Reforms (960-988).

Long after Alfred’s death, St. Dunstan, then Archbishop of Canterbury and head of the English Church, set out to push forward the work begun by the great King.  He labored to accomplish three things.  First, he sought to establish a higher system of education; secondly, he desired to elevate the general standard of monastic life; finally, he tried to inaugurate a period of national peace and economic progress.

He began his work when he had control of the abbey of Glastonbury, in the southwest of England.  He succeeded in making the school connected with that abbey the most famous one in the whole kingdom (S45).  He not only taught himself, but, by his enthusiasm, he inspired others to teach.  He was determined that from Glastonbury a spirit should go forth which should make the Church of England the real educator of the English people.  Next, he devoted himself to helping the inmates of the monasteries in their efforts to reach a truer and stronger manhood.  That, of course, was the original purpose for which those institutions had been founded (S45), but, in time, many of them had more or less degenerated.  Every athlete and every earnest student knows how hard it is to keep up the course of training he has resolved upon.  The strain sometimes becomes too great for him.  Well, the monk in his cell had found out how difficult it was for him to be always faithful to his religious vows.  St. Dunstan roused these men to begin their work anew.  He re-created monasticism in England, making it stricter in discipline and purer in purpose.