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ALCORAN the human body. They differ strenuously regarding the conclusions to be drawn from these facts, some contending that alcohol is a "partial food when taken in moderate quantities". Modern knowledge justifies the belief that in health it is never a food in any sense, be the quantity large or small, but always a poison, biologically or physiologically speaking; in disease it is neither a food nor a poison, but may be a suitable and helpful drug. It should be rightly called what it rightly is, a drug, and not a drink; a narcotic, and not a tonic. Its use as a drug will then be rightly restricted, as in the case of other drugs, to the intelligent direction of men upon whom the State imposes, at the present day, rigid restrictions as to preliminary education, supplemented by study of the technical knowledge of the profession of medicine. Its uses in disease are many, but their consideration does not come within the scope of this article. There are cases of typhoid fever, pneumonia, and diphtheria in which alcohol is a most valuable help, and in some other conditions its use may be advisable. Careful observations of its effects, in private practice and in extensive hospital experience, compel the writer to subscribe to this conclusion: "Alcohol in health is often a curse; alcohol in disease is mostly a blessing." From a sociological standpoint, we are compelled by incontrovertible evidence to acknowledge that it is of all causes the most frequent source of poverty, unhappiness, divorce, suicide, immorality, crime, insanity, disease, and death.

2em

Alcoran. See.

Alcuin (: Lat. Albinus, also Flaccus), an eminent educator, scholar, and theologian, b. about 735; d. 19 May, 804. He came of noble Northumbrian parentage, but the place of his birth is a matter of dispute. It was probably in or near York. While still a mere child, he entered the cathedral school founded at that place by Archbishop Egbert. His aptitude, and piety early attracted the attention of Ælbert, master of the school, as well as of the Archbishop, both of whom devoted special attention to his instruction. In company with his master, he made several visits to the continent while a youth, and when, in 767, Ælbert succeeded to the Archbishopric of York, the duty of directing the school naturally devolved upon Alcuin. During the fifteen years that followed, he devoted himself to the work of instruction at York, attracting numerous students and enriching the already valuable library. While returning from Rome in March, 781, he met Charlemagne at Parma, and was induced by that prince, whom he greatly admired, to remove to France and take up residence at the royal court as "Master of the Palace School". The school was kept at Aachen most of the time, but was removed from place to place, according as the royal residence was changed. In 786 he returned to England, in connection, apparently, with important ecclesiastical affairs, and again in 790, on a mission from Charlemagne. Alcuin attended the Synod of Frankfort in 794, and took an important part in the framing of the decrees condemning Adoptionism as well as in the efforts made subsequently to effect the submission of the recalcitrant Spanish prelates. In 796, when past his sixtieth year, being anxious to withdraw from the world, he was appointed by Charlemagne Abbot of St. Martin's at tours. Here, in his declining years, but with undiminished zeal, he set himself to build up a model monastic school, gathering books and drawing students, as before, at Aachen and York, from far and near. He died 19 May, 804. Alcuin appears to have been only a deacon, his favourite appellation for himself in his letters being "Albinus, humilis Levita". Some have thought, however, that he became a priest, at least during his later years. His unknown biographer, in describing this period, says of him, celebrabat omni die missarum solemnia (Jaffé, "Mon. Alcuin., Vita," 30). In one of his last letters Alcuin acknowledged the gift of a casula, or chasuble, which he promises to use in missarum solemniis (Ep. 203). It is probable that he was a monk, and a member of the Benedictine Order, although this also has been disputed, some historians maintaining that he was simply a member of the secular clergy, even when he exercised the office of abbot at Tours.

I. .—Of his work as an educator and scholar it may be said, in a general way, that he had the largest share in the movement for the revival of learning which distinguished the age in which he lived, and which made possible the great intellectual renaissance of three centuries later. In him Anglo-Saxon scholarship attained to its widest influence, the rich intellectual inheritance left by Bede at Jarrow being taken up by Alcuin at York, and, through his subsequent labours on the Continent, becoming the permanent possession of civilized Europe. The influences surrounding Alcuin at York were made up chiefly of elements from two sources, Irish and Continental. From the sixth century onward Irishmen were busy founding schools as well as churches and monasteries all over Europe; and from Iona, according to Bede, Aidan and other Celtic missionaries bore the knowledge of the classics, along with the light of the Christian faith, into Northumbria. Both Aldhelm and Bede had Irish teachers. Celtic scholarship appears, however, to have entered only remotely and indirectly into Alcuin's training. The strongly Roman cast which characterized the School of Canterbury, founded by Theodore and Hadrian, who were sent by the Pope to England in 669, was naturally reproduced in the School of Jarrow, and from this, in turn, in the School of York. The influence is discernible in Alcuin, on the religious side, in his devoted adhesion to Roman, as distinguished from particular local or national, traditions, as well as, in an intellectual way, in the fact that his knowledge of Greek, which was a favourite study with Irish scholars, appears to have been very slight.

An important feature of Alcuin's educational work at York was the care and preservation, as well as the enlargement, of its precious library. Several times he journeyed through Europe for the purpose of copying and collecting books. Numerous pupils, too, gathered around him, from all parts of England and the continent. In his poem "On the Saints of the Church of York", written, probably, before he took up his residence in France, he has left us a valuable description of the academic life at York, together with a list of the authors represented by its catalogue of books. The course of studies embraced, in the words of Alcuin, "liberal studies and the holy word", or the seven liberal arts comprising the trivium and the quadrivium, with the study of Scripture and the Fathers for those more advanced. A feature of the school that deserves mention was the organization of studies on the modern plan, the students being separated into classes, according to the subjects and divisions of