The true duties of the King of the French clearly lay in France, and not in Egypt or Tunis. No such charge lies at the door of the great King of the West Saxons. With an inquiring spirit which took in the whole world, for purposes alike of scientific inquiry and of Christian benevolence, Alfred never forgot that his first duty was to his own people. He forestalled our own age in sending expeditions to explore the Northern Ocean, and in sending alms to the distant Churches of India; but he neither forsook his crown, like some of his predecessors, nor neglected his duties, like some of his successors. The virtue of Alfred, like the virtue of Washington, consisted in no marvellous displays of super-human genius, but in the simple, straightforward discharge of the duty of the moment. But Washington, soldier, statesman, and patriot, like Alfred, has no claim to Alfred's further characters of saint and scholar. William the Silent, too, has nothing to set against Alfred's literary merits; and in his career, glorious as it is, there is an element of intrigue and chicanery utterly alien to the noble simplicity of both Alfred and Washington. The same union of zeal for religion and learning with the highest gifts of the warrior and the statesman is found, on a wider field of action, in Charles the Great. But even Charles cannot aspire to the pure glory of Alfred. Amidst all the splendour of conquest and legislation, we cannot be blind to an alloy of personal ambition, of personal vice, to occasional unjust aggressions and occasional acts of cruelty. Among our own later princes, the great Edward alone can bear for a moment the comparison with his glorious ancestor. And, when tried by such a standard, even the great Edward fails. Even in him we do not see the same wonderful union of gifts and virtues which so seldom meet together; we cannot acquit Edward of occasional acts of violence, of occasional recklessness as to means; we cannot attribute to him the pure, simple, almost childlike disinterestedness which marks the character of Alfred.' Let Wordsworth, on behalf of the poets of England, complete the picture: 'Behold a pupil of the monkish gown, The pious Alfred, king to justice dear! Lord of the harp and liberating spear; Mirror of princes! Indigent renown Might range the starry ether for a crown Equal to his deserts, who, like the year, Pours forth his bounty, like the day doth cheer, And awes like night, with mercy-tempered frown. Ease from this noble miser of his time No moment steals; pain narrows not his cares-- Though small his kingdom as a spark or gem, Of Alfred boasts remote Jerusalem, And Christian India, through her widespread clime, In sacred converse gifts with Alfred shares.'" _Thomas Hughes, Alfred the Great, chapter 24._