not ascetic.  His temper was open, frank, and genial.  He loved books and strangers and travellers.  There was nothing cynical about him, in spite of his perplexities and discouragements.  He had a beautifully balanced character and a many-sided nature.  He had the power of inspiring confidence in defeat and danger.  His judgment and good sense seemed to fit him for any emergency.  He had the same control over himself that he had over others.  His patriotism and singleness of purpose inspired devotion.  He felt his burdens, but did not seek to throw them off.  “Hardship and sorrow,” said he, “not a king but would wish to be without these if he could; but I know he cannot.”  “So long as I have lived I have striven to live worthily.”  “I desire to leave to the men that come after me a remembrance of me in good works.”  These were some of his precious utterances, so that the love which he won a thousand years ago has lingered around his name from that day to this.

It was a strong sense of duty, quickened by a Christian life, which gave to the character of Alfred its peculiar radiance.  He felt his responsibilities as a Christian ruler.  He was affable, courteous, accessible.  His body was frail and delicate, but his energies were never relaxed.  Pride and haughtiness were unknown in his intercourse with bishops or nobles.  He had no striking defects.  He was the model of a man and a king; and he left the impress of his genius on all the subsequent institutions of his country.  “The tree,” says Dr. Pauli, one of his ablest biographers, “which now casts its shadow far and near over the world, when menaced with destruction in its bud, was carefully guarded by Alfred; but at the period when it was ready to burst forth into a plant, he was forced to leave it to the influence of time.  Many great men have occupied themselves with the care of this tree, and each in his own way has advanced its growth.  William the Conqueror, with his iron hand, bent the tender branches to his will; Henry the Second ruled the Saxons with true Roman pride, but in Magna Charta the old German nature became aroused and worked powerfully, even among the barons.  It became free under Edward the Third,—­that prince so ambitious of conquest:  the old language and the old law, the one somewhat altered, the other much softened, opened the path to a new era.  The nation stood like an oak in the full strength of its leafy maturity; and to this strength the Reformation is indebted for its accomplishment.  Elizabeth, the greatest woman who ever sat upon a throne, occupied a central position in a golden age of power and literature.  Then came the Stuarts, who with their despotic ideas outraged the deeply-rooted Saxon individuality of the English, and by their fall contributed to the sure development of that freedom which was founded so long before.  The stern Cromwell and the astute William the Third aided in preparing for the now advanced nation that path in which it has ever since moved.