place of Grim. Kirkby is the living-place by the Kirk or church. In 886, by another treaty, London and the surrounding district was abandoned to Alfred.

6. Alfred's Government.-Alfred seemed to be worse off than his grandfather had been. The Danes acknowledged that he was their over-lord or superior, but they were not likely to be very obedient. He had under him really only a piece of England instead of the whole. Yet that piece was better for him than the whole would have been. In the part that was under him were three of the old kingdoms, Wessex, Sussex, and Kent, a small part of Essex, and half of Mercia. Even if he had been only an ordinary man, we may be sure that these districts would have clung to him for fear of falling into the hands of the Danes. Very few men, however, are as great as Alfred was. People who do not know very much about men are apt to think a man is great because he has done something very great. Those who know most about men know that the best and greatest meh are those who not only do great things, but know exactly what they cannot do, and so do not try to do what is impossible, though it may seem easy. Alfred was one of these men. He discovered at once that he could not subdue the Danes in the North, and he contented himself with defending his own part of the country. He fitted out a navy that the Danes might not attack him by sea. He did what was better than this; he tried his best to make the people better and wiser than they were before. He strove to

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 three grandsons, Athelstan, Edmund, and Edred, his great-grandsons Edwy and Edgar, 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, seventysix years after England had been divided by the Treaty of Chippenham, 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.

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.