Alfred, besides this peaceful settlement with the Danes, owes his claim to the title of "great" to the wisdom with which he settled the affairs of his own kingdom and for the favour that he showed to literature and culture of all kinds. He was a Christian, and had insisted, when he made his treaty with the Danes, that they should profess themselves Christians and be baptised. He did all that he could to help in educating his people. He himself made translations into the Anglo-Saxon of books written in Latin giving the description and history of parts of Germany from which some of the Gothic tribes had come. He also caused books on religion to be translated, so that the people who were educated sufficiently to be able to read their own language might study them, and while he rebuilt monasteries and other buildings belonging to the Church, which had been ruined in the perpetual wars, he expected the priests and the Churchmen (the clerics, or clerks) to undertake the education of the people. Probably Alfred was far too wise to suppose that peace would be kept for long between his Anglo-Saxons on the west of the Watling Street and the Danes on the east. The Danes were of a race akin to the Anglo-Saxons and to the Franks--they were German or Gothic. The Romans and Anglo-Saxons themselves had both come into Britain as quite a different race {120} from the inhabitants whom they conquered; but the Danes were of nearly the same stock as those whom they found, and harassed, in England. Both were of that race called Nordic, of which it was characteristic for the men to be tall and large, with fair hair and blue eyes. We have seen how the English were gradually losing their freedom under their earls or thanes. The Danes came in with their freedom little if any less than it ever had been. They were hardy and independent; and even to this day we find these qualities to be characteristic of the dwellers in those lands east of the Watling Street in which most of the Danes settled. The southern and western men are of a tamer character. [Illustration: A VIKING SHIP.] It would take far too long to tell how the Danes broke the peace arranged by Alfred, and all about the continual fighting, with the many changes of fortune which came to pass between them and the English all through the tenth century. Towards the end of that century we find the English kings bribing the commanders of combined fleets of Danes and of allied Northmen, from Norway, to retire and leave the English coasts. Of course that only meant that these pirates came again the next year, so that it became necessary to levy a special tax, which was called the Danegeld, to buy them off. {121}