with itself, a fresh way of
viewing the world, a lively power of observation. This King introduced
the German mind with its learning and reflection into the literature
of the world; he stands at the head of the prose-writers and
historians in a German tongue--the people's King of the most primeval
kind, who is also the teacher of his people. We know his laws, in
which extracts from the books of Moses are combined with restored
legal usages of German origin; in him the traditions of antiquity are
interpenetrated by the original tendencies of the German mind. We
completely weaken the impression made on us by this great figure, so
important in his first limited and arduous efforts, by comparing him
with the brilliant names of antiquity. Each man is what he is in his
own place.

Though the Anglo-Saxon monarchy wanted that element of authority which
the kings of other German tribes drew from the Roman government by
transmission or succession, yet it had strengthened itself, like the
others, by union with the Church. Alfred, too, was at Rome in his
boyhood: it stood him in good stead that he had been anointed, and, as
men said, adopted by a Roman pope. In the reconquest of the land,
Church ideas had played an important part. It was impossible to drive
out the invading foes, they could only be held in check; never would
they have submitted to the Anglo-Saxon commonwealth had they not at
the same time been converted to Christianity. Nothing, moreover,
contributed more to this than the effort, which was then the order of
the day in the Christian world, to base the organisation of the Church
on monasticism: from Italy this tendency spread to Germany, from South
France to North, from thence to England, where it produced its
greatest effect. Now the power of conversion is inherent only in
sharply-defined doctrines; and it was precisely this tendency that
penetrated the Northern natures: the sons of the Vikings became the
champions of monachism; to the fury with which the fathers had
destroyed the monasteries succeeded in the sons a zeal to restore
them. And in what good stead this stood the Anglo-Saxon kings! The
kingly power obtained, through the splendour which the union with
religion bestowed on its victorious arms, a reverential recognition by
the old native population as well as by the invaders.

Alfred's grandson had regained Northumbria by a somewhat doubtful
title, and had then maintained his right in a great battle, reno