his life, he should have fallen into the errors and faults
which youthful monarchs are very prone to commit on being suddenly
raised to power. But then, on the other hand, men are prone, in all
ages of the world, and most especially in such rude and uncultivated
times as these were, to judge military and governmental action by
the sole criterion of success. Thus, when they found that Alfred's
measures, one after another, failed in protecting his country, that
the impending calamities burst successively upon them, notwithstanding
all Alfred's efforts to avert them, it was natural that they should
look at and exaggerate his faults, and charge all their national
misfortunes to the influence of them.

There was a certain Saint Neot, a kinsman and religious counselor of
Alfred, the history of whose life was afterward written by the
Abbot of Crowland, the monastery whose destruction by the Danes was
described in a former chapter. In this narrative it is said that Neot
often rebuked Alfred in the severest terms for his sinful course of
life, predicting the most fatal consequences if he did not reform, and
using language which only a very culpable degree of remissness and
irregularity could justify. "You glory," said he, one day, when
addressing the king, "in your pride and power, and are determined and
obdurate in your iniquity. But there is a terrible retribution in
store for you. I entreat you to listen to my counsels, amend your
life, and govern your people with moderation and justice, instead of
tyranny and oppression, and thus avert if you can, before it is too
late, the impending judgments of Heaven."

Such language as this it is obvious that only a very serious
dereliction of duty on Alfred's part could call for or justify; but,
whatever he may have done to deserve it, his offenses were so fully
expiated by his subsequent sufferings, and he atoned for them so
nobly, too, by the wisdom, the prudence, the faithful and devoted
patriotism of his later career, that mankind have been disposed to
pass by the faults of his early years without attempting to scrutinize
them too closely. The noblest human spirits are always, in some
periods of their existence, or in some aspects of their characters,
strangely weakened by infirmities and frailties, and deformed by sin.
This is human nature. We like to imagine that we find exceptions,
and to see specimens of moral perfection in our friends or in the
historical characters whose gen