of terror was
broken. The tide of invasion turned. From an attitude of attack the
northmen were thrown back on an attitude of defence. The whole reign of
AElfred was a preparation for a fresh struggle that was to wrest back from
the pirates the land they had won.

[Sidenote: AElfred]

What really gave England heart for such a struggle was the courage and
energy of the King himself. Alfred was the noblest as he was the most
complete embodiment of all that is great, all that is loveable, in the
English temper. He combined as no other man has ever combined its
practical energy, its patient and enduring force, its profound sense of
duty, the reserve and self-control that steadies in it a wide outlook and
a restless daring, its temperance and fairness, its frank geniality, its
sensitiveness to affection, its poetic tenderness, its deep and
passionate religion. Religion indeed was the groundwork of AElfred's
character. His temper was instinct with piety. Everywhere throughout his
writings that remain to us the name of God, the thought of God, stir him
to outbursts of ecstatic adoration. But he was no mere saint. He felt
none of that scorn of the world about him which drove the nobler souls of
his day to monastery or hermitage. Vexed as he was by sickness and
constant pain, his temper took no touch of asceticism. His rare
geniality, a peculiar elasticity and mobility of nature, gave colour and
charm to his life. A sunny frankness and openness of spirit breathes in
the pleasant chat of his books, and what he was in his books he showed
himself in his daily converse. AElfred was in truth an artist, and both
the lights and shadows of his life were those of the artistic
temperament. His love of books, his love of strangers, his questionings
of travellers and scholars, betray an imaginative restlessness that longs
to break out of the narrow world of experience which hemmed him in. At
one time he jots down news of a voyage to the unknown seas of the north.
At another he listens to tidings which his envoys bring back from the
churches of Malabar. And side by side with this restless outlook of the
artistic nature he showed its tenderness and susceptibility, its vivid
apprehension of unseen danger, its craving for affection, its
sensitiveness to wrong. It was with himself rather than with his reader
that he communed as thoughts of the foe without, of ingratitude and
opposition within, broke the calm pages of Gregory or Boethius. "Oh,