. And the great glory and achievement of Bret
Harte consists in this, that he realised that they do not become
callous, supercilious, and cynical, but that they do become sentimental
and romantic, and profoundly affectionate. He discovered the intense
sensibility of the primitive man. To him we owe the realisation of the
fact that while modern barbarians of genius like Mr. Henley, and in his
weaker moments Mr. Rudyard Kipling, delight in describing the coarseness
and crude cynicism and fierce humour of the unlettered classes, the
unlettered classes are in reality highly sentimental and religious, and
not in the least like the creations of Mr. Henley and Mr. Kipling. Bret
Harte tells the truth about the wildest, the grossest, the most
rapacious of all the districts of the earth--the truth that, while it is
very rare indeed in the world to find a thoroughly good man, it is
rarer still, rare to the point of monstrosity, to find a man who does
not either desire to be one, or imagine that he is one already.

ALFRED THE GREAT

The celebrations in connection with the millenary of King Alfred struck
a note of sympathy in the midst of much that was unsympathetic, because,
altogether apart from any peculiar historical opinions, all men feel the
sanctifying character of that which is at once strong and remote; the
ancient thing is always the most homely, and the distant thing the most
near. The only possible peacemaker is a dead man, ever since by the
sublime religious story a dead man only could reconcile heaven and
earth. In a certain sense we always feel the past ages as human, and our
own age as strangely and even weirdly dehumanised. In our own time the
details overpower us; men's badges and buttons seem to grow larger and
larger as in a horrible dream. To study humanity in the present is like
studying a mountain with a magnifying glass; to study it in the past is
like studying it through a telescope.

For this reason England, like every other great and historic nation, has
sought its typical hero in remote and ill-recorded times. The personal
and moral greatness of Alfred is, indeed, beyond question. It does not
depend any more than the greatness of any other human hero upon the
accuracy of any or all of the stories that are told about him. Alfred
may not have done one of the things which are reported of him, but it is
immeasurably easier to do every one of those things than to be the man
of whom such things are re