should burn three inches in an hour. It is said that the weight of wax
which he used for each candle was twelve pennyweights, that is, but
little more than half an ounce, which would make, one would suppose, a
_taper_ rather than a candle. There is, however, great doubt about the
value of the various denominations of weight and measure, and also of
money used in those days. However this may be, the candles were each a
foot long, and of such size that each would burn four hours. They were
divided into inches, and marked, so that each inch corresponded with a
third of an hour, or twenty minutes. A large quantity of these candles
were prepared, and a person in one of the chapels was appointed to
keep a succession of them burning, and to ring the bells, or give the
other signals, whatever they might be, by which the household was
regulated, at the successive periods of time denoted by their burning.

As each of these candles was one foot long, and burned three inches in
an hour, it follows that it would last four hours; when this time
was expired, the attendant who had the apparatus in charge lighted
another. There were, of course, six required for the whole twenty-four
hours. The system worked very well, though there was one difficulty
that occasioned some trouble in the outset, which, however, was not
much to be regretted after all, since the remedying of it awakened the
royal ingenuity anew, and led, in the end, to adding to Alfred's other
glories the honor of being the inventor of _lanterns_!

The difficulty was, that the wind, which came in very freely in those
days, even in royal residences, through the open windows, blew the
flames of these horological candles about, so as to interfere quite
seriously with the regularity of their burning. There was no glass
for windows in those days, or, at least, very little. It had been
introduced, it is said, in one instance, and that was in a monastery