In a word, the Anglo-Saxon of the ninth century was in essentials very much like his descendant of the present day. He was religious: he was a lover of order: he was a good fighting man: he was fond of outdoor sports and occupations: he was tenacious of his freedom: he was imaginative, poetical, and dreamy: he was fond of music: he was still full of the old traditions and superstitions which ruled his life, long after he had become a Christian. This is a general summary of his character. In one virtue he was as yet wanting. We must not expect in him what we call the national and patriotic sentiment. The man of Wessex was the enemy of the man of Mercia: the north stood aloof from the south: there was no England or Britain: there was only a large island divided among eight nations, or ten nations, or five nations, according to the year of the Lord: some of them spoke the same tongue: all the Angles, Jutes, and Saxons had similar institutions: nevertheless they were enemies. You remember, two hundred years later on, how London accepted the rule, first, of Cnut the Dane: and, next, of William the Norman. Both of them were what we should call foreigners. There was no such feeling then. To the Londoner it mattered little whether his king was Mercian, Northumbrian, Saxon, Jute, Dane, or Norman. London received kings from all these people. There was not yet any feeling existing for the country as a whole. It was part of the work of Alfred, unseen and unsuspected, to make it possible to weld the different nations into one: to create little by little the love of country in place of the old loyalty to the tribe. Let us concede that Alfred fought, not for England, but for Wessex. In doing so, it is true, he fought for all England, but perhaps without his knowledge. In the same way David fought first for his own little country—for Judea—and made it possible for his successor to create one great country, of which Judea was the centre. I have lingered a long time over the character of the people whom Alfred was called upon to rule. Without this knowledge it is impossible to understand what the king did and why he did it, and in what respects his work is so truly remarkable and wonderful. Let us now pass on to the history itself, and first, naturally, to the invasions of the Danes.