“And Alfred learned his lesson well in the next few years, for you will find that in the year 886 A.D., ‘which was the thirty-eighth year since his birth, King Alfred, after the burning of cities and slaying of the people, honourably rebuilt the city of London and made it again habitable, and gave it into the custody of his son-in-law, Æthelred, Earl of Mercia; to which King Alfred, all the Angles and Saxons, who before had been dispersed every where, or were in captivity with the pagans, voluntarily turned and submitted themselves to his rule!’
“You see they had turned from his rule many of them because it was an unjust one in those early years of his reign. But they were never subdued by the Danes,--so that my statement which you quote, ‘that the battle of Ashdown saved England from one hundred years of Paganism,’ is not shaken.
“I have directed my London bookseller to leave a copy of Asser’s ‘Life of Alfred the Great,’ for you, at Somerset House, directed to the care of my friend, the secretary of the Antiquaries’ Society; you will find it to be well worth a careful perusal. I shall be always glad to hear from you upon the subjects on which we have conversed, and heartily desiring that the veneration for all that is old may grow upon you, and that God may have you in his good keeping, I am faithfully yours,
But to return to my subject, from which I have been wandering for the pleasure of putting in the old gentleman’s letter. The Parson in our walks set me thinking about fifty subjects which I never cared about before, because I could see that he was himself deeply interested in them, and really believed whatever he said to me. We used to get home by about twelve o’clock, and then I would go away by myself, and think over what we had been talking about till dinner. And, after dinner, Miss Lucy, and sometimes Joe, would come out and walk with us till tea. Sometimes we went to the village school, and I sat at the door and heard them teaching; and as long as Mr. Warton was with us it was all right, but afterwards, when he had gone, I could see that the schoolmistress, a young woman of about thirty, sallow-faced and rather prudish, used to look at me as if I had no business there.