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the new faith to which he bowed. To finer minds the charm lay then as now in the light it threw on the darkness which encompassed men's lives-the darkness of the future as of the past. "So seems the life of man, O King," burst forth an aged Ealdorman, "as a sparrow's flight through the hall when a man is sitting at meat at wintertide, with the warm fire lighted on the hearth, but the chill rain-storm without. The sparrow flies in at one door, and tarries for a moment in the light and heat of the hearth-fire, and then flying forth from the other, vanishes into the wintry darkness whence it came. So tarries for a moment the life of man in our sight; but what is before it, what after it, we know not. If this new teaching tell us aught certainly of these let us follow it." Coarser argument told on the crowd: "None of your people, Eadwine, have worshipped the gods more busily than I," said Coifi, the priest; "yet there are many more favored and more fortunate. Were these gods good for any thing they would help their worshippers.' Then leaping on horseback, he hurled his spear into the sacred temple at Godmanham, and with the rest of the Witan embraced the religion of the king.-History of the English People, $47.

ELFRED THE GREAT.

Ælfred was the noblest as he was the most complete embodiment of all that is great, all that is lovable in the English temper. He combined, as no other man has ever combined, its practical energy, its patient and enduring force, its profound sense of duty, the reserve and self-control that steadies in it a wide outlook and a restless daring; its frank geniality, its sensitiveness. to affection, its poetic tenderness, its deep and passionate religion. Religion indeed was the groundwork of Elfred's character. His temper was instinct with piety. Everywhere throughout his writings that remain to us the name of God, the thought of God, stir him to outbursts of ecstatic adoration. But he was no mere saint. He felt none of that scorn of the world about him which drove the nobler souls of his day to monas

tery or hermitage. Vexed as he was by sickness and constant pain, his temper took no touch of asceticism. His rare geniality, a peculiar elasticity and nobility of nature, gave color and charm to his life. A sunny frankness and openness of spirit breathes in the pleasant chat of his books, and what he was in his books he showed himself in his daily converse.

Ælfred was in truth an artist, and both the lights and shadows of his life were those of the artistic temperament. His love of books, his love of strangers, his questionings of travellers and scholars, betray an imaginative restlessness that longs to break out of the narrow world of experience which hemmed him in. At one time he jots down news of a voyage to the unknown seas of the north. At another he listens to tidings which his envoys bring back from the churches of Malabar. And side by side with this restless outlook of the artistic nature, he showed its tenderness and susceptibility, its vivid apprehension of unseen danger, its craving for affection, its sensitiveness to wrong. It was with himself rather than with his reader that he communed, as thoughts of the foe without, of ingratitude and opposition within, broke the calm pages of Gregory or Boethius. "Oh, what a happy man was he," he cries once, "that man had a naked sword hanging over his head from a single thread; so as to me it always did!" "Desirest thou power?" he asks at another time; "but thou shalt never obtain it without sorrows-sorrows from strange folk, and yet keener sorrows from thine own kindred." "Hardship and sorrow!" he breaks out again; "not a king would wish to be without these if he could but I know that he cannot." The loneliness which breathes in words like these has often begotten in great rulers a cynical contempt of men and the judgments of men. But cynicism found no echo in the large and sympathetic soul of Elfred. He not only longed for the love of his subjects but for the remembrance of generations to come.

Nor did his inner gloom or anxiety check for an instant his vivid and versatile activity. To the scholars he gathered round him he seemed the very type of a scholar, snatching every instant he could find to read or

listen to books read to him. The singers of his court found in him a brother singer, gathering the old songs. of his people to teach them to his children, breaking his renderings from the Latin with simple verse, solacing himself in hours of depression with the music of the Psalms. He passed from court and study to plan buildings and instruct craftsmen in gold-work, to teach even falconers and dog-keepers their business. But all this versatility and ingenuity was controlled by a cool good sense. Ælfred was a thorough man of business. He was careful of detail, laborious, methodical. He carried in his bosom a little hand-book in which he noted things as they struck him now a bit of family genealogy, now a prayer, now such a story as that of Ealdhelm playing minstrel on the bridge. Each hour of the day had its appointed task; there was the same order in the division of his revenue and in the arrangement of his court.

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Scholar and soldier, artist and man of business, poet and saint, his character kept that perfect balance which charms us in no other Englishman save Shakespeare. But full and harmonious as his temper was, it was the temper of a king. Every power was bent to the work of rule. His practical energy found scope for itself in the material and administrative restoration of the wasted land. His intellectual activity breathed fresh life into education and literature. His capacity for inspiring trust and affection drew the hearts of Englishmen to a common centre, and began the upbuilding of a new England. And all was guided, controlled, and ennobled by a single aim. "So long as I have lived," said the king, as life closed about him, "I have striven to live worthily." Little by little men came to know what such a life of worthiness meant. Little by little they came to recognize in Ælfred a ruler of higher and nobler stamp than the world had seen. Never had it seen a king who lived solely for the good of his people. Never had it seen a ruler who set aside every personal aim to devote himself solely to the welfare of those whom he ruled. It was this grand self-mastery which gave him his power over the men about him. Warrior and conqueror as he was, they saw him set aside at thirty the warrior's dream

of conquest; and the self-renouncement of Wedmore struck the keynote of his reign.

But still more is it this height and singleness of purpose, this absolute consecration of the noblest faculties to the noblest aim, that lifts Alfred out of the narrow bounds of Wessex. If the sphere of his action seems too small to justify the comparison of him with the few whom the world owns as its greatest men, he rises to their level in the moral grandeur of his life. And it is this which has hallowed his memory among his own English people. "I desire," said the king, in some of his latest words, "I desire to leave to the men that come after me a remembrance of me in good works." His aim has been more than fulfilled. His memory has come down to us with a living distinctness through the mist of exaggeration and legend which time gathered around. it. The instinct of the people has clung to him with. a singular affection. The love which he won a thousand years ago has lingered around his name from that day to this. While every other name of those earlier times has all but faded from the recollection of Englishmen, that of Ælfred remains familiar to every English child. -History of the English People, §§ 68, 69.

THE NORMAN VICTORY AT SENLAC, OR HASTINGS.

On the 14th of October, 1066, William led his men at dawn along the higher ground that leads from Hastings to the battle-field which Harold had chosen. From the mound of Telham the Normans saw the host of the English gathered thickly behind a rough trench and a stockade on the height of Senlac. Marshy ground covered their right; on the left-the most exposed part of their position-the huscarles, or body-guard, of Harold-men in full armor and wielding huge axes were grouped round the golden dragon of Wessex and the standard of the King. The rest of the ground was covered by thick masses of half-armed rustics who had flocked at Harold's summons to fight with the stranger. It was against the centre of this formidable position that William arrayed his Norman knighthood, while the mercenary forces he

had gathered in France and Brittany were ordered to attack its flanks.

A general charge of the Norman foot opened the battle. In front rode the minstrel Taillefer, tossing his sword in the air and catching it again while he chanted the song of Roland. He was the first of the host who struck a blow, and he was the first to fall. The charge broke vainly on the stout stockade behind which the English warriers plied axe and javelin, with the fierce cries of "Out! out!" and the repulse of the Norman footmen was followed by a repulse of the Norman horse. Again and again the Duke rallied and led them to the fatal stockade. All the fury of fight that glowed in his Norseman's blood, all the headlong valor that spurred him over the slopes of Val-es-dunes, mingled that day with the coolness of head, the dogged perseverance, the inexhaustible fertility of resource which shone at Mortemer and Varaville. His Breton troops, entangled in the marshy ground on his left, broke in disorder; and as panic spread through the army a cry arose that the Duke was slain. William tore off his helmet "I live," he shouted, "and by God's help I will conquer yet." Maddened by a fresh repulse, the Duke spurred right at the standard; unhorsed, his terrible mare struck down Gyrth, the King's brother; again dismounted, a blow from his hand hurled to the ground an unmannerly rider who would not lend him hiş steed. Amid the roar and tumult of the battle he turned the flight he had arrested into the means of victory. Broken as the stockade was by his desperate onset, the shield-wall of the warriors behind it still held the Normans at bay, till William by feint of flight drew a part of the English force from their post of vantage. Turning on his disorderly pursuers, the Duke cut them to pieces, broke through the abandoned line, and made himself master of the central ground. Meanwhile the French and Bretons made good their ascent on either flank. At three the hill seemed won, and at six the fight still raged around the standard where Harold's hus-carles stood stubbornly at bay on a spot marked afterward by the high altar of Battle Abbey. An order from the Duke at last brought his archers to the front.

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