shed a hill-fortress on a height rising
like an island out of the standing waters and marshlands in the still
only slightly cultivated land of Somersetshire; this not only served
him as an asylum, but also as a central point from which he too ranged
through the land far and wide, like the enemy, except that his object
was to guard it, and make it ring once more with the already forgotten
name of the King. Around his banners gathered, with reviving courage,
the population of the neighbouring districts also: the Saxons could
again appear in the open field; from their advancing shield-wall the
disorderly onsets of the Vikings recoiled, the victory was theirs.
Hereupon, moreover, as if the decision between the two religions
depended on the result of the war, the leader of the heathens came
over to Christianity, and took an Anglo-Saxon name. The Danes attached
themselves to the principles and the powers which they had come forth
to destroy.

King Alfred is a marvellous phenomenon: suffering from a disease which
sometimes broke out with violence, and which he never ceased to feel
for a single day of his life, he not merely withstood the extreme of
peril at that moment so big with ruin, but also founded a system of
resistance throughout the kingdom, in which his arms so worked
together by sea and land that each new band of Vikings betook
themselves again to their ships, and those that had already penetrated
into the country, gave way step by step. We remark with interest how,
under Alfred and his children, his son who succeeded him, and his
manlike daughter, the protecting fortresses advance from place to
place, and provide free space for the Anglo-Saxon community. The
culture already existing, the whole future of which had been saved by
Alfred, attained in him its fullest development. How many years had
passed since the hour when an illuminated initial letter gave him his
first taste for a book, before he could master even the elementary
branches of knowledge! then he devoted his whole efforts to instil new
life into the studies that had almost perished, and to give them a
national character. He not merely translated a number of the later
authors of antiquity, whose works had contributed most to the
transmission of scientific culture; in the episodes which he
interweaves in them he shows a desire for knowledge that reaches far
beyond them; but especially we find in them a reflective and
thoughtful mind, solid sense at peace