and his fruitless successes
have names still in use (such as Wilton, Basing, and Ashdown), that
last epic battle which really broke the barbarian has remained without
a modern place or name. Except that it was near Chippenham, where
the Danes gave up their swords and were baptized, no one can pick out
certainly the place where you and I were saved from being savages for
ever.

But the other day under a wild sunset and moonrise I passed the place
which is best reputed as Ethandune, a high, grim upland, partly bare
and partly shaggy; like that savage and sacred spot in those great
imaginative lines about the demon lover and the waning moon. The
darkness, the red wreck of sunset, the yellow and lurid moon, the long
fantastic shadows, actually created that sense of monstrous incident
which is the dramatic side of landscape. The bare grey slopes seemed to
rush downhill like routed hosts; the dark clouds drove across like riven
banners; and the moon was like a golden dragon, like the Golden Dragon
of Wessex.

As we crossed a tilt of the torn heath I saw suddenly between myself and
the moon a black shapeless pile higher than a house. The atmosphere
was so intense that I really thought of a pile of dead Danes, with some
phantom conqueror on the top of it. Fortunately I was crossing these
wastes with a friend who knew more history than I; and he told me
that this was a barrow older than Alfred, older than the Romans, older
perhaps than the Britons; and no man knew whether it was a wall or a
trophy or a tomb. Ethandune is still a drifting name; but it gave me a
queer emotion to think that, sword in hand, as the Danes poured with
the torrents of their blood down to Chippenham, the great king may have
lifted up his head and looked at that oppressive shape, suggestive of
something and yet suggestive of nothing; may have looked at it as we
did, and understood it as little as we.

The Flat Freak

Some time ago a Sub-Tropical Dinner was given by some South African
millionaire. I forget his name; and so, very likely, does he. The humour
of this was so subtle and haunting that it has been imitated by another
millionaire, who has given a North Pole Dinner in a grand hotel, on
which he managed to spend gigantic sums of money. I do not know how he
did it; perhaps they had silver for snow and great sapphires for lumps
of ice. Anyhow, it seems to have cost rather more to bring the Pole to
London than to take Peary to the Pole. All