noble and
the good. Whether Oxford, his pet child--or Westminster Hall, as mindful
of the code he gave us--or Greenwich, as the evening resting-place of
those sons of thunder whom the genius of Alfred first raised up to man
our wooden walls--should be the site of some great national memorial,
might admit of question; but there can be none that something of the
kind has been owing now near upon a thousand years, and that it will
well become us to claim boastingly for England so true, so glorious a
hero. With a view to expedite this object, and strictly to bear upon the
topic in author-fashion, it has come into my thought how much we want a

LIFE OF ALFRED:

my little reading knows of none, beyond what dictionaries have gathered
from popular history and vague tradition, rather than manuscripts of old
time, and Asser, the original biographer. Of this last work, written
originally in Saxon, and since translated into Latin, I submit that a
popular English version is imperatively called for; a translation from a
translation being never advisable, (compare Smollett's Anglo-Gallified
dilution of '_Don Quixote_,') the primary source should be again
consulted; and seeing that profound ignorance of the ancient Saxon
coupled with, as now, total indifference about its acquisition, place me
in the list of incapables, I leave the good suggestion to be used by
pundits of the Camden or Roxburghe or other book-learned society. If it
may have been already done by some neglected scribe, bring it to the
light, and let us see the bright example set to all future ages by that
early Crichton; if never yet accomplished, my zeal is over-paid should
the hint be ever acted on; and if, which is still possible, an English
version of the life of Alfred should be positively rife and common among
the reading public, your humble ignoramus has nothing for it but to pray
pardon of its author for not having known him, and to walk softly with
the world for writing so much before he reads.

But this is an accessory--an episode; I plead for a statue to King
Alfred: and--(now for another episode; is there _no_ cure for these
desperate parentheses?)--_apropos_ of statues, let me, in the simple
untaught light of nature, suggest a word or two with regard to some
recent under-takings. Notwithstanding classical precedents, whereof more
presently, it does seem ridiculous to common sense, to set a man like a
scavenger-bird at Calcutta, or a stork at Athens,