Lord of the harp and liberating spear,
Mirror of princes!”
Now, amidst the gloom, the greatest of all our kings appears. “England’s Darling,” and “Truth-Teller,” men called him in his lifetime, and these proud titles well attest the affection and esteem in which the men of his own age justly held him. Nor has his glory faded with the passing of centuries. The more his career is studied, the greater he grows and the brighter shines his peerless fame. His nature was a beautiful blend of courage and tenderness, perseverance and patience. He loved justice and mercy, and he lived and died for his people. Warrior, statesman, scholar, lawgiver, and true patriot, he stands for all time as the type and model of the perfect king. A thousand years have sped since his pure spirit departed, but still he is one of the greatest glories of our land. His life was one long struggle against fierce foes, against the darkness of ignorance, against the desolation of ruin and the cruel pangs of bodily pain, but he triumphed over all—
“Not making his high place the lawless perch
Of wing’d ambitions, nor a vantage-ground
For pleasure; but through all this tract of years
Wearing the white flower of a blameless life.”
And now for his story, which writers have loved to dwell upon in every succeeding age. Born in royal Wantage, where his statue now stands, he was but three years of age when the Vikings made their first settlement in England. In that year a great army of Danes, with three hundred and fifty ships, swept up the Thames, sacked London and Canterbury, and put to flight an English army. Two years later, Alfred’s father, Ethelwulf, and his elder brother, Ethelbald, met them in battle, and after a stubborn fight won a great victory. Such a desperate struggle had not taken place in England for many years, and more than half the Danish army perished on the field. Another victory followed, and for a time the Danes were checked. So far, their coming had been but the low mutterings of the fierce storm which was soon to burst in all its fury. Alfred was cradled in an hour of terrible anxiety and ever-present danger.
Almost the first incident which his biographer recounts is the pretty story of how his mother sought to encourage her sons to learn to read. Showing the lads a beautifully-illuminated volume of English verse, and reading aloud some of its contents, she promised the volume to the first of them who could read it for himself. Fired by the desire to possess the volume, and also to learn something more of its wondrous pages, Alfred sought out a tutor, and ere long was able to claim it as his own. The love of letters, thus early demonstrated, grew with the years. In his later and more peaceful days he surrounded himself with scholars, and loved their company and converse better than aught else. Asser, the Welsh monk, who was his devoted friend, tells us that as “Alfred advanced through the years of infancy and youth, he appeared more comely in person than his brothers, and his countenance, speech, and manners were more pleasing than theirs. His noble birth and noble nature implanted in him from his cradle a love of wisdom above all things.”
In his twentieth year Alfred married a noble Mercian lady named Mercill. Meanwhile, the Danes, growing bolder and bolder, had become a grievous peril to the land. In the year of Alfred’s marriage they marched on York, and capturing it, pushed into Mercia and wintered at Nottingham. In the twenty-second year of Alfred’s life they triumphed over Edmund, King of the East Angles. Him they dragged forth and bound to a tree. Then with fiendish glee they shot arrows into his limbs, and at length, unable to break his proud and confident spirit, they struck off his devoted head. They parted his realm amongst themselves, and placed their chief, Guthrum, on his throne.