It was appropriate that the first of the great schools should be established in the city of the warrior-student Alfred, the first of that semi-barbarian race of monarchs to turn to the higher things of the mind, and without losing the leadership of the nation and the love of his people in so doing.  On the contrary, he gained his niche in the world’s history as much for this virtue as for the heroic side of his character.  The King’s palace stood not far from the river bank and probably the college buildings cover part of the site.  Like most Saxon domestic structures, it was of wood, and no visible traces remain, though the recent interesting discoveries at Old Windsor lead one to wonder what may lie hidden beneath the turf here.

[Illustration:  Statue of Alfred.]

The Hero-King was buried, first in the cathedral, and then in the Newminster.  After the destruction of this building by fire, his remains were removed to Hyde Abbey on the north of the city.  This met the fate of most other monasteries at the Dissolution, and the site of the final interment and, according to some accounts, the actual sarcophagus itself, were desecrated by eighteenth-century vandals in order to build a lock-up!

The bronze figure of Alfred, standing with sword held aloft as a cross, on its colossal block of granite at the bottom of High Street, is an inspired work by Hamo Thornycroft.  It was erected in 1901 to commemorate the millenary of the king’s death and is the most successful statue in the kingdom, imposing in its noble simplicity.

High Street is still quaint and old fashioned, though it has few really ancient houses.  “God-Begot House” is Tudor and the old “Pent House” over its stumpy Tuscan pillars is very picturesque.  Taking the town as a whole it can hold its own in interest with the only other English medieval city worthy of comparison—­Chester.  The visitor must have a fund of intelligent imagination and a blind eye for incongruities and then his peregrinations will be a remembered pleasure.  The beautiful gardens belonging to the houses around the close and the black and white front of Cheyney Court will be recollected when more imposing scenes have faded.

The “George Hotel,” though it but modestly claims to be “old established,” is said by some authorities to stand on the site of an hostelry called the “Moon” that was very ancient in the days of Richard II.  The new title was given about the time of Agincourt when the battle cry—­“St. George “—­had made the saint popular.

The City Cross is graceful and elegant fifteenth-century work, much restored of course, and in a quaint angle of some old houses that rather detract from its effectiveness.  The exact site of the inhuman execution of Mrs. Alicia Lisle in September, 1685, is unknown, but it was probably in the wider part of the High Street.  This gentle old lady, nearly eighty years of age, had given shelter to two men in all innocence of their connexion with Sedgemoor, but the infamous Jeffreys ordered her to be burnt; a sentence commuted by James II to beheading.