Alfred had rescued the country. But the country which he had rescued was a wreck. The Church, the great organ of civilization as well as of spiritual life, was ruined. The monasteries were in ashes. The monks of St. Cuthbert were wandering from place to place, with the relics of the great northern Saint. The worship of Woden seemed on the point of returning. The clergy had exchanged the missal and censer for the battle-axe, and had become secularized and brutalized by the conflict. The learning of the Order was dead. The Latin language, the tongue of the Church, of literature, of education, was almost extinct. Alfred himself says that he could not recollect a priest, south of the Thames, who understood the Latin service or could translate a document from the Latin when he became king. Political institutions were in an equal state of disorganization. Spiritual, intellectual, civil life--everything was to be restored; and Alfred undertook to restore everything. No man in these days stands alone, or towers in unapproachable superiority above his fellows. Nor can any man now play all the parts. A division of labour has taken place in all spheres. The time when the missionaries at once converted and civilized the forefathers of European Christendom, when Charlemagne or Alfred was the master spirit in everything, has passed away, and with it the day of hero-worship, of rational hero- worship, has departed, at least for the European nations. The more backward races may still need, and have reason to venerate, a Peter the Great.