There was, however—I venture to read between the lines—one saving clause. The Anglo-Saxon was not only afraid of the unknown, which caused him to invent malignant deities, but in his mind the God of Creation was stronger than the God of Destruction. There is hope for a people while that belief survives. Long after he became a Christian the Saxon continued to retain his old beliefs under other names: he saw and conversed in imagination with the old deities whom he had forsaken: they spoke to him in the thunder: he saw their forms in the flying cloud, in the splendour of the sunset: he heard their whispers in the woods: they came to him in dreams. Religion, to the Anglo-Saxon, was a thing more real, more present, than it has ever been to any people except the Russian and the Jew. This is perhaps the most important point to be observed in the character of Alfred’s people. They were profoundly influenced by their religion. In the eighth century, when Christianity was spread over the south and the middle of the country, all classes began to long after the religious life as they understood it. Kings and Queens—there were ten Kings and eleven Queens—Princes and Princesses, nobles and freemen—all who could be received, crowded into the monasteries: they were eager for the life of meditation and of prayer: they made the cloisters rich: they filled the monastic houses with gold and silver plate and rich treasure. When the Danish invasion began, the Danes very soon found out that it was the monastery, and not the town, which they should sack: and at the same time the people found out that the full monastery meant the shrunken army. It has been said that the Anglo-Saxon never changes. In this respect at least he has never changed. Through all the changes and chances of a thousand years, wherever he has penetrated, wherever he has settled, he has carried with him the same earnestness and the same reality of religion. We must also note, next to the earnestness of his religious belief, the freedom of his institutions. The liberties of our race, which have become to us like the very air we breathe, so that we are not even conscious of them, were not wrested by the people from reluctant kings. These liberties had always been with them from the prehistoric times when the family was the unit, and when custom was the only kind of law. Among their primitive customs were the first rude forms of their free institutions. From the Forests of North Germany, from the mouth of the Elbe, not from any king, came the right of free meeting: the right of free speech: the right of free thought: the right of free work.