inclination for the cultivation of letters. Had it not been that the Latin language, having ceased to be a living tongue, was zealously retained as the language of the church, thus preserving the key to the learning of the ancients, all knowledge of the literature of Greece and Rome would have perished. As it was, learning was confined almost exclusively to the clergy, and prose writings were generally limited to the subject of religion, and were usually composed in the Latin language.

English prose began with Bede, or, as he is most commonly called, the Venerable Bede. This remarkable man was born in Northumbria in A.D. 673, and his whole life was spent at the monastery of Jarrow, where, as he says, "although attentive to the rule of my order and the service of the church, my constant pleasure lay in learning, or teaching, or writing." Little by little, and in spite of many and great difficulties, he acquired what was, at that time, considered a vast fund of knowledge, relating to every science then in existence-astronomy and physics, music, grammar and arithmetic, philosophy, rhetoric, and medicine. By reason of these attainments he gained the right to be termed not only the foremost scholar of the age in which he lived, but also the father of English learning. Forty-five works are known to have been written by him. These embrace a variety of religious commentaries, homilies upon certain portions of the Scriptures, historical memoirs, and crude treatises upon scientific subjects. Many of these works are simply compilations from older Latin writings, and but few of them exhibit any originality of thought or independence of argument. With but a single exception, all were written in the Latin language; and they indicate a variety of learning, an acquaintance with books, and an extent of research, which, for that age, is truly wonderful. Bede's knowledge of the ancient classics is shown in the quotations from Plato and Aristotle, from Cicero, Seneca, and Lucretius, with which his works are frequently embellished; and in a charming little eclogue

which he wrote upon the coming of spring he even ventured upon an imitation of Virgil.

Bede's greatest work, and the only one which proved to be of special value to succeeding ages, was his Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation. It was, in reality, a history of England from the earliest Anglo-Saxon times to his own, based upon such information as it was possible for him to obtain from general inquiries, from tradition, and from the scanty records then in existence. This work, although composed in the Latin language, possesses a more than ordinary interest to the student of English literature, from the fact that it was the first history of England ever written, and that it was the source from which has been derived nearly all our knowledge concerning the century and a half immediately succeeding the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity. It was completed in the year 731. "It was," says a well-known historian, "the work of a true scholar, breathing love to God and man; succinct, yet often warm with life; business-like, and yet childlike in its tone; suited admirably to the wants and to the capabilities of those for whom it was written."

It is in his translation of the Gospel of St. John, completed in 735, that Bede appears to us as the first writer of English vernacular prose. The story of the writing of this first prose book in our language, as related by Cuthbert, one of Bede's pupils, is full of pathetic interest:

As the season of Easter was drawing near, the zealous scholar and teacher began to feel symptoms of approaching death. But he continued faithfully the performance of his daily duties, and suffered nothing to distract his attention from his accustomed labor, or to abate his usual cheerfulness and good humor. Now and then, while in the midst of his labors, with his pupils around him, he would sing some verses of an English song-"rude rhymes that told how before the need-fare, Death's stern 'must go,' none can enough bethink him what is to be his doom for good or ill. We never read without weeping," writes Cuthbert.

And so the anxious days passed, and Ascension week drew near, and both master and pupils toiled with increased zeal to finish, if possible, the work in hand—the translation of St. John's Gospel. "Learn with what speed you may," said the dying man; "for I know not how long I may last. I do not want my scholars to read a lie, or to work to no purpose when I am gone." The last day came, and his pupils stood around him.

"There is still one chapter wanting," said the scribe, seeing the master's increased weakness.

"It is easily done," said Bede; "take thy pen, and write quickly."

They wrote until the eventide drew on. Then the scribe spoke again:

"There is yet but one sentence to be written, dear master."

"Write it quickly," was the response of the dying master. "It is finished, now," at length said the youth.

"Thou hast well said," faintly replied the master; "all is finished now."

The sorrowing pupils supported him tenderly in their arms while he chanted the solemn "Glory to God," and with the last words of the song his breathing ceased.

Such is the story of the beginning of our literature. The humble translation of the Gospel of St. John, completed under circumstances of such painful anxiety, and amid the gathering shadows of death, was the vanguard, so to speak, of that long procession of noble works which, for more than a thousand years, has been contributing to the development and the glory of the English nation.

Bede was "the first among English scholars, the first among English theologians, the first among English historians," he was the founder not only of English prose, but of medieval history. More than all this, he was the first of English schoolmasters; and it was in this latter capacity that his influence over his countrymen and over the generation which succeeded him was most directly exerted

and most strongly felt. The six hundred pupils who gathered around him to listen to his instructions were so many agents assisting to diffuse and perpetuate the knowledge which he had gathered. A desire for learning sprang up, and soon became general. Egbert, who was ordained archbishop of York in the same year in which the Venerable Bede died, founded a school in York monastery; and thither scholars, from foreign countries as well as from all parts of England, flocked in eager multitudes. Northumberland became, for a time, the centre of learning in Christian Europe. The fame of Egbert as a teacher of theology, and of his successor Albert as an instructor in general knowledge, spread throughout all the adjoining lands.

"The learned Albert gave drink to thirsty minds at the sources of various studies and sciences. To some he was eager to communicate the arts and rules of grammar; for others he made flow the waves of rhetoric. He exercised these in the combats of jurisprudence, and those in the songs of Adonia. Some learned from him to sound the pipes of Castalia, and to strike with a lyric foot the summits of Parnassus. To others he taught the harmony of heaven, the works of the sun and the moon, the five zones of the pole, the seven wandering stars, the laws of the course of the stars, their appearance and decline, the motions of the sea, the tremblings of the earth, the nature of men, of beasts, and birds, and the inhabitants of the woods; he unveiled the various qualities and the combinations of numbers; he taught how to calculate with certainty the solemn return of Easter; and, above all, he explained the mysteries of the holy Scriptures."

Thus wrote Alcuin, himself a scholar, and, for some time, a teacher, in this celebrated school. Alcuin was born in 735, and he was, from infancy, brought up and educated in the monastery of York. In 781, at the age of forty-six, he had become known as the foremost scholar in Europe, and was sent to Rome on the double mission of bringing

the archbishop's pallium to York, and of procuring books for the growing library which Egbert had founded. On his way home he stopped for a few days at Parma, where he was introduced to the Emperor Charlemagne, who chanced, at that time, to be passing through the city. The emperor was much pleased with the scholarship of the Englishman, and urged him to spend the winter with him in his palace. Alcuin consented, and Charlemagne, fired with an intense desire for knowledge, established a court school, and placed Alcuin at its head. In this school, long known as the School of the Palace, the emperor and all the members of his family were pupils. The next year, Alcuin, having obtained permission from the archbishop of York, took up his residence permanently at the French court. There he was not only made director of the schools of the empire, but he was for many years the confidant, the adviser, and the favorite of the emperor.

In the year 796 he retired to the abbey of Saint Martin of Tours, where he remained until his death in 804. At this abbey, which was one of the wealthiest in the kingdom, he established a school and a library similar, if not superior, to those at York, and here were educated many of the most distinguished men of the succeeding century. The literary activity of Alcuin was, for the time in which he lived, extraordinary. Chief among the tasks to which he for some time applied himself was the restoring and correction of ancient manuscripts. The writing-room of the monastery was a literary workshop. As soon as a work was completed by Alcuin or his pupils, a number of copies were made, and sent to the different churches and monasteries throughout the empire. The zeal for the preservation and multiplication of manuscripts becam general. "The hunting monks were bribed to industry by being allowed to chase as many beasts as would yiel skins to meet the demand from the scriptorium for parch ment. Wine-bibbing monks were told that it was bette to copy books than to tend vineyards, by as much a