personages which have figured among mankind, is, in a great measure,
explained and accounted for, in Alfred's case, by the peculiar
circumstances of his early history.

It was his brother Ethelred, as has already been stated, whom Alfred
immediately succeeded. His father's name was Ethelwolf; and it seems
highly probable that the peculiar turn which Alfred's mind seemed to
take in after years, was the consequence, in some considerable degree,
of this parent's situation and character. Ethelwolf was a younger son,
and was brought up in a monastery at Winchester. The monasteries of
those days were the seats both of learning and piety, that is, of such
learning and piety as then prevailed. The ideas of religious faith and
duty which were entertained a thousand years ago were certainly very
different from those which are received now; still, there was
then, mingled with much superstition, a great deal of honest and
conscientious devotion to the principles of Christian duty, and of
sincere and earnest desire to live for the honor of God and
religion, and for the highest and best welfare of mankind. Monastic
establishments existed every where, defended by the sacredness which
invested them from the storms of violence and war which swept over
every thing which the cross did not protect. To these the thoughtful,
the serious, and the intellectual retired, leaving the restless, the
rude, and the turbulent to distract and terrify the earth with their
endless quarrels. Here they studied, they wrote, they read; they
transcribed books, they kept records, they arranged exercises of
devotion, they educated youth, and, in a word, performed, in the
inclosed and secluded retreats in which they sought shelter, those
intellectual functions of civil life which now can all be performed in
open exposure, but which in those days, if there had been no monastic
retreats to shelter them, could not have been performed at all.