rce contest in boats and on the shore. Both parties suffered very
severely; and, finally, the Danes, getting first released, made their
escape and put to sea.

Notwithstanding this partial discomfiture, Alfred soon succeeded in
driving the ships of the Danes off his coast, and in thus completing
the deliverance of his country. Hastings himself went to France, where
he spent the remainder of his days in some territories which he had
previously conquered, enjoying, while he continued to live, and for
many ages afterward, a very extended and very honorable fame. Such
exploits as those which he had performed conferred, in those days,
upon the hero who performed them, a very high distinction, the luster
of which seems not to have been at all tarnished in the opinions of
mankind by any ideas of the violence and wrong which the commission of
such deeds involved.

Alfred's dominions were now left once more in peace, and he himself
resumed again his former avocations. But a very short period of his
life, however, now remained. Hastings was finally expelled from
England about 897. In 900 or 901 Alfred died. The interval was spent
in the same earnest and devoted efforts to promote the welfare and
prosperity of his kingdom that his life had exhibited before the war.
He was engaged diligently and industriously in repairing injuries,
redressing grievances, and rectifying every thing that was wrong.
He exacted rigid impartiality in all the courts of justice; he held
public servants of every rank and station to a strict accountability;
and in all the colleges, and monasteries, and ecclesiastical
establishments of every kind, he corrected all abuses, and enforced a
rigid discipline, faithfully extirpating from every lurking place all
semblance of immorality or vice. He did these things, too, with so
much kindness and consideration for all concerned, and was actuated
in all he did so unquestionably by an honest and sincere desire to
fulfill his duty to his people and to God, that nobody opposed him.
The good considered him their champion, the indifferent readily caught
a portion of his spirit and wished him success, while the wicked were
silenced if they were not changed.

Alfred's children had grown up to maturity, and seemed to inherit,
in some degree, their father's character. He had a daughter, named
AEthelfleda, who was married to a prince of Mercia, and who was famed
all over England for the superiority of her mental powers, her