just as steadily English under the Danish princes as the whole
country afterwards remained steadily English under the Norman kings.

There was, however, one section of the true English race which kept
itself largely free from the Scandinavian host. North of the Tyne the
Danes apparently spread but sparsely; English ealdormen continued to
rule at Bamborough over the land between Forth and Tyne. Hence
Northumberland and the Lothians remained more purely English than any
other part of Britain. The people of the South are Saxons: the people of
the West are half Celts; the people of the North and the Midlands are
largely intermixed with Danes; but the people of the Scottish lowlands,
from Forth to Tweed, are almost purely English; and the dialect which we
always describe as Scotch is the strongest, the tersest, and the most
native modern form of the original Anglo-Saxon tongue. If we wish to
find the truest existing representative of the genuine pure-blooded
English race, we must look for him, not in Mercia or in Wessex, but
amongst the sturdy and hard-headed farmers of Tweedside and Lammermoor.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE SAXONS AT BAY IN WESSEX.

Only one English kingdom now held out against the wickings, and that was
Wessex. Its comparatively successful resistance may be set down, in some
slight degree, to the energy of a single man, AElfred, though it was
doubtless far more largely due to the relatively strong organisation of
the West Saxon state. In judging of AElfred, we must lay aside the false
notions derived from the application of words expressing late ideas to
an early and undeveloped stage of civilised society. To call him a great
general or a great statesman is to use utterly misleading terms.
Generalship and statesmanship, as we understand them, did not yet exist,
and to speak of them in the ninth century in England is to be guilty of
a common, but none the more excusable, anachronism. AElfred was a sturdy
and hearty fighter, and a good king of a semi-barbaric people. As a lad,
he had visited Rome; and he retained throughout life a strong sense of
his own and his people's barbarism, and a genuine desire to civilise
himself and his subjects, so far as his limited lights could carry him.
He succeeded to a kingdom overrun from end to end by piratical hordes:
and he did his best to restore peace and to promote order. But his
character was merely that of a practical, common-sense, fighting West
Saxon, brought up