It is true, he had good materials to work with.  He had the Anglo-Saxon race to act upon at the time, a race capable of appreciating and entering into his plans; and he has had the same race to carry them on, for the ten centuries which have elapsed since he laid his foundations.  As no other race of men but Anglo-Saxons could have produced an Alfred, so, probably, no other race could have carried out such plans as Alfred formed.  It is a race which has always been distinguished, like Alfred their great prototype and model, for a certain cool and intrepid energy in war, combined with and surpassed by the industry, the system, the efficiency, and the perseverance with which they pursue and perfect all the arts of peace.  They systematize every thing.  They arrange—­they organize.  Every thing in their hands takes form, and advances to continual improvement.  Even while the rest of the world remain inert, they are active.  When the arts and improvements of life are stationary among other nations, they are always advancing with them.  It is a people that is always making new discoveries, pressing forward to new enterprises, framing new laws, constituting new combinations and developing new powers; until now after the lapse of a thousand years, the little island feeds and clothes, directly or indirectly, a very large portion of the human race, and directs, in a great measure, the politics of the world.

Whether Alfred reasoned upon the capacities of the people whom he ruled, and foresaw their future power, or whether he only followed the simple impulses of his own nature in the plans which he formed and the measures which he adopted, we can not know; but we know that, in fact, he devoted his chief attention, during all the years of his reign, to perfecting in the highest degree the internal organization of his realm, considered as a great social community.  His people were in a very rude, and, in fact, almost half-savage state when he commenced his career.  He had every thing to do, and yet he seems to have had no favorable opportunities for doing any thing.

In the first place, his time and attention were distracted, during his whole reign, by continued difficulties and contentions with various hordes of Danes, even after his peace with Guthrum.  These troubles, and the military preparations and movements to which they would naturally give rise, would seem to have been sufficient to have occupied fully all the powers of his mind, and to have prevented him from doing any thing effectual for the internal improvement of his kingdom.

Then, besides, there was another difficulty with which Alfred had to contend, which one might have supposed would have paralyzed all his energies.  He suffered all his life from some mysterious and painful internal disease, the nature of which, precisely, is not known, as the allusions to it, though very frequent throughout his life, are very general, and the physicians of the day, who probably were not very skillful, could