deny himself as much as the monks did. But he did it, not by leaving the world, but by living in the world, and helping his people. No king ever showed forth in his own person the truth of the saying, He that would be first amongst you let him be the servant of all,' as Alfred did. He was weak, and subject to a painful disease. Yet he gave himself no rest in doing good. He collected the best laws of his forefathers, added some of his own, and asked his people to accept them. He chose out the best and wisest men for his friends, and set them to teach others. He loved learning and books, not only because he wanted to know more himself, but because he wished to make his subjects know more. He translated books which he thought it would do them good to read, and when he knew anything that was not in the book, he put it into the translation, though it was not in the book itself. When he died he left behind him better laws, better education, a better and higher life altogether.

7. The Submission of the Danes.-The English of the South soon showed that men who are better and wiser are also stronger than the fierce untaught barbarian, whenever they really try to defend themselves, instead of leaving their defence to other people as the Britons did in the time of the Romans. Alfred's descendants who were kings after him, his son Edward, his grandson Athelstan, his great grandsons Edmund and Edred, won by a slow and steady course of victory that northern England which Alfred

had given up as beyond his power to conquer. In 954, seventy-six years after England had been divided by the Treaty of Wedmore, the process of reuniting it was completed. The English King came to rule over all England more completely than Egbert had done. Englishmen and Danes were alike subject to his government.

CHAPTER V.

THE ENGLISH AND THE DANISH KINGS.

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1. Edgar and Dunstan.-For some years the now united England was at peace. Edgar, the King who reigned after the short rule of his brother Edwy, is called by the chroniclers The Peaceful.' He is said to have been rowed by eight kings on the river Dee. The man who really governed in his name was Archbishop Dunstan. He was the first man who ruled England without being a fighting man. The work he had to do was to be done with brains more than with the sword. Dunstan had to keep England united, and to prevent the Danes and the English from quarrelling with one another. This would have been more difficult than it was if the Danes and the English had been as different as Englishmen and Frenchmen. But they were very much alike, and though their languages were not the same, they were not so different that

they could not easily learn to talk to one another. The Danes were ruder and less civilised than the English, but they had already become Christians,

and they might be taught, as Englishmen had been taught, to live as Christians ought to live.

2. Dunstan and the Danes. In trying to make

EDGAR ON THE DEE.

the Danes and the English live peaceably together, Dunstan avoided one mistake which it is very easy to fall into. Many people are very anxious to improve others who do not know so much as themselves, or are not so good as themselves, but they do not succeed because they want everybody to do exactly as they do, and to think exactly as they think. Dunstan did not try to make the Danes exactly like the English. He wished the Danes to keep their own laws and customs and the English to keep theirs.

3. Dunstan brings in Schoolmasters.-Dunstan tried to unite men by teaching them to love what was true and beautiful. He was himself a lover of books, and music, and art. He was a great encourager of education. In the long wars the English had forgotten much that their forefathers knew. Dunstan sent abroad for schoolmasters, and nothing pleased him so much as to find a man who was fit to teach. If he encouraged the schoolmasters, he encouraged the monks as well. Monks, in those days, were not lazy as they afterwards became. Bede, who many years before had written a history of the country, was a monk. The men who wrote the Chronicle, that wonderful record in which the deeds of our forefathers were told in their own tongue, were also monks.

4. Ethelred the Unready.-Edgar and Dunstan died and evil days came upon England. Edward, the next king, was murdered. Then came Ethelred, rightly named the Unready, or the man without counsel. Fresh Danes from Denmark and Norway

came to plunder and conquer England. In some places resistance was made, but the King did nothing to help the people who resisted. His only

idea was to give the Danes plenty of money to go away. They went away, and of course they came back again and asked for more money to go away again.

5. Elfheah the Martyr.-There were brave men in England; but the bravest was Elfheah, the Archbishop of Canterbury. He was taken prisoner by the Danes, and set in their midst as they were feasting. They asked him for money. He told them it was not his to give, because he could only find money by taking it from the poor people on the estates belonging to him as archbishop. They grew so angry that they pelted him with beef-bones to make him yield. He would not yield, and at last they killed him with the hard bones. The English Church wisely counted him as a martyr and a saint. Long afterwards, one of his successors, the pure and holy Anselm, was asked whether a man could really be a martyr who did not die for the faith. Yes,' he answered, he who dies for righteousness dies for the faith.'

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6. The Danish Conquest.-Brave men like Elfheah, or like others who fought and died, could not beat off the Danes unless they had a better king than Ethelred. The Danes, this time, wanted to conquer all England. They had a king, Swegen, at their head, who knew how to fight, and when he died his son Cnut, who succeeded him after his death, fought as well as his father. At last Ethelred died and was