I venture, lastly, to express my own personal hope that great as were the achievements of Alfred—the keynote to be struck and to be maintained will be that Alfred is, and will always remain, the typical man of our race—call him Anglo-Saxon, call him American, call him Englishman, call him Australian—the typical man of our race at his best and noblest. I like to think that the face of the Anglo-Saxon at his best and noblest is the face of Alfred. I am quite sure and certain that the mind of the Anglo-Saxon at his best and noblest is the mind of Alfred: that the aspirations, the hopes, the standards of the Anglo-Saxon at his best and noblest are the aspirations, the hopes, the standards of Alfred. He is truly our Leader, our Founder, our King. When our monument takes shape and form let it somehow recognise this great, this cardinal fact. Let it show somehow by the example of Alfred the Anglo-Saxon at his best and noblest—here within the circle of the narrow seas, or across the ocean; wherever King Alfred’s language is spoken; wherever King Alfred’s laws prevail; into whatever fair lands of the wide world King Alfred’s descendants have penetrated. WALTER BESANT. ALFRED AS KING BY FREDERIC HARRISON ALFRED AS KING It is a commonplace with historians—and with the historians of many countries and different schools of opinion—that our English Alfred was the only perfect man of action recorded in history; for Aurelius was occasionally too much of the philosopher; Saint Louis usually too much of the saint; Godfrey too much of the Crusader; the great Emperors were not saints at all; and of all more modern heroes we know too much to pretend that they were perfect. Of all the hyperboles of praise there is but one that we can safely justify with the strictest canons of historic research. Of all the names in history there is only our English Alfred whose record is without stain and without weakness—who is equally amongst the greatest of men in genius, in magnanimity, in valour, in moral purity, in intellectual force, in practical wisdom, and in beauty of soul. In his recorded career from infancy to death, we can find no single trait that is not noble and suggestive, nor a single act or word that can be counted as a flaw. In the history of modern Europe there is nothing which can compare in duration and in organic continuity with the unbroken evolution of our English nation. And now that the royal house of France has passed from the sphere of political realities into that of historic memories, there is no dynasty in Europe which can be named in the same breath with that which has seen a succession of forty-nine sovereigns since Alfred; nor has any King or Cæsar a record of ancestry which can compare with that of the royal Lady who through thirty-two generations traces her lineal descent to the Hero-King of Wessex.