diocre qualities. Alfred was shrewd
enough to inherit the courage and persistence of his grandfather. Our D.
A. R. friends are right and Mark Twain is wrong--it is really more
necessary to have a grandfather than a father.
English civilization begins with Alfred. If you will refer to the
dictionary you will find that the word "civilization" simply means to be
civil. That is, if you are civilized you are gentle instead of
violent--gaining your ends by kindly and persuasive means, instead of
through coercion, intimidation and force.
Alfred was the first English gentleman, and let no joker add "and the
last." Yet it is needless and quite irrelevant to say that civilized
people are not always civil; nor are gentlemen always gentle--so little
do words count. Many gentlemen are only gents.
Alfred was civil and gentle. He had been sent to Rome in his boyhood,
and this transplantation had done him a world of good. Superior men are
always transplanted men: people who do not travel have no perspective.
To stay at home means getting pot-bound. You neither search down in the
soil for color and perfume nor reach out strong toward the sunshine.
It was only a few years before the time of Alfred that a Christian monk
appeared at Edin-Borough, and told the astonished Engles and Saxons of
the gentle Jesus, who had been sent to earth by the All-Father to tell
men they should love their enemies and be gentle and civil and not
violent, and should do unto others as they would be done by. The natural
religion of the Great Spirit which the ancient Teutonic people held had
much in it that was good, but now they were prepared for something
better--they had the hope of a heaven of rest and happiness after death.
Christianity flourishes best among a downtrodden, poor, subdued and
persecuted people. Renan says it is a religion of sorrow. And primitive
Christianity--the religion of conduct--is a beautiful and pure doctrine
that no sane person ever flouted or scoffed.
The parents of Alfred, filled with holy zeal, allowed one of the
missionary monks to take the boy to Rome. The idea was that he should
become a bishop in the Church.
Ethelred, the elder brother of Alfred, had succeeded Ethelwulf, his
father, as King. The Danes had overrun and ravished the country. For
many years these marauding usurpers had fed their armies on the products
of the land. And now they had more than two-thirds of the country under
their control, and the fear t
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