LORD ROSEBERY ON KING ALFRED.

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 11592, 30 October 1901, Page 4

LORD ROSEBERY ON KING ALFRED.

The following is speech made by Lord at-the unveiling of the monument Akred at Winchester on September We ara hereto-day. to consecrate a great memory, and to ?aise before our countrymen the standard of a great example. For a thousand years ago there died in this city one who. by common consent represents the highest type of kingship and the tngiest type of' Englishman. It is meet ana fitting- that we_ should celebrate such an occasion. Around King Alfred there has grown np a halo of tradition such as •would dim a lesser man, though his personality stands out pure and distinct amid and yet for our purpose even the tradition is perhaps sufficient. The noble statne which I am about to unveil can only be an effigy of the imagination, and so the Alfred we reverence mav well be an idealised figure. For our real knowledge of him is scanty and vague. We have/ however, draped ronnd his form, not without reason, all the highest attributes of manhood and kingship. The King without fear, without stain, and without reproach is tcs us the true representation of Alfred, la him, indeed, we venerate not so mnch. a staking actor in our history as the ideal Englisnman, the perfect Sovereign, the pioneer of England's greatness. With his name we associate our metropolis, our fleet, our literature, our laws, our foreign relations, cur first efforts at education. He is, in. a word, the embodiment of our civilisation. And yet so narrow was his stage, so limited his opportunities, that he would have marvelled not less than the son of Jesse or the son of at the primacy to which he had been called, and at the secular reverence whic-h embalms his memory- Even at- his best ne ruled over but a province ; he made no great conquests ; he ■wrote no great books; he knew none of the splendours of wealth and dominion; there was nothing in Tiirn of the Alexander or the Caesar j he had none of the glories of Solomon, save wisdom alone. What, indeed, is the secret of his fame, of his hold on the imagination of mankind? It is, in the first place, a question of personality. He has stamped his character on the cold annals of humanity. How is that done? We cannot tell.- His life has those romantics elements which fascinate successive generations. But, when all is said and done, ytc cannot wholly explain it. The magnetism of history is an unexplored secret of nature. From another point of view we behold in his career the highest and best type of the qualities which we cherish in our national character. Note first his absorbed devotion to duty. " This will I say," he writes, " that I have sought to live worthily while I lived, and after my life to leave to the man who come after me a remembrance in good works." And he gave himself, we are told, wMv unreservedly to his Royal responsibilities and the charge of his people. Then he was the first Englishman of whom it is recorded that he never knew that he was beaten. Sometimes the Danes crnshed him, sometimes ha crushed the Danes; bat he won in the end. Nor was it only with these that he had to contend. In the last 2-0

yeara of the half-century that was his life ~"Le struggled against agonising disease and the paralysing apprehensions of. its recurrence. That he should have done so

mnclt is wonder.'nl; that he should have done so much under this disability is amazing. Then he had the supreme quality of truth. His word was his bond. That is a quality whi-jh was then rare among princes, and is never too common, but it is one which Englishmen love. He was known as the truth-teller. It is a noble title, more distinguished than the vapid and prostituted epithet of Great. In history he stands as Alfred the Trnth-teller. Then he was a* man, a complete man. What strikes one in him, indeed, is his completeness. Complete is. I think, his distinctive epithet. Though profoundly pious, he waa co anchorite, though a King, not a pompous and mysterious phantom ;. though a passionate seeker after knowledge, not a pedant or a prig. He lived as a man anions men, or he was " All things to all men." in the best sense, interested in all worthy interests, mixing freely with his subjects, and playing among them, but with a little scroll "of high thoughts always ia his bosom, a mar. among men dealing all

day frith the common affairs of life, but with the high ideal binning at his heart. Is it not thus that great tilings are done? Is it not in practical character, fired half unconsciously with imagination, that the best of the Britou is seen? And is there a higher specimen of this potent amalgam than Alfred'! 'i';:eu he was a King, a true King, the guide, the leader, the iather ol his people. He did for them all that in their barbarous condition they required, and in so working a limited work for them, he wrought an immortal work for us. He was the captain of all their enterprise, their industrial loreman, their schoolmaster, their lay bishop, their general, their admiral, their legislator. On a small scale, and therefore less, but without distorting vices, and therefore greater, he "was to his English kingdom wnac I'eter was to Kussiu, and in working for his people, raising them, strengthening them, eclaiging their horizons, he built better th;m he knew. His rude councillors were the ancestors of our Parliament, his flotillii of galleys was the foundation of our fleet; he first won an English victory at sea ; he formed his casaul levies into a powerful militia, if not an army; he breathed the earliest inspiration of education into England, and with an eye for commerce and deience he gave us London. not as the first or the second founder, but as the founder of the London which we know. It is indeed less for what he did, great as were his achievements in relation to his opportunities, than for what he engendered' that we cow honour his name. He was cheered, we are told, in the distress of desertion- and defeat by visions of the Saints, who bade him be of good cheer. And little indeed could the hunted king in his xushy concealment amid the booming of the bitterns have realised the awful destinies which awaited him and his people. But suppose that in some such dream a Seer had led him up into a mountain and shown him the England which was to be, the England of which he had laid the foundations, had not concealed from him the first dark hour in which his kingdom and race should be overwhelmed by a \*nmwn invasion, of which the iron should enter the English soul—cot to slay bat to strengthen, to introduce, indeed, the last element wanted to compose an Imperial race —and then passing over ages had solaced him by showing him the new England, as we see it, had led him to the banks of the Thames and had shown him the little Saxon fort developed into a world's capital and a world's mart, inhabited by millions, often crowded and distressed, but familiar with comforts unknown to a Saxon prince. Suppose that, guiding him through the endless maze of teeming dwellings, the Seer had brought- him to a palace where the descendants of his Witan conduct a system of Government which, remote indeed from perfection, is the parent of most constitutions in the civilised world. Jfot far removed, again, the Saxon King might have beheld another palace consecrated to that jurisprudence which he himself, with a solemn invocation to the Almighty, had raised from the dead. And then, passing down and beyond the- Imperial river, he might have been brought within sight of the British fleet, the offspring of his own, poor boats. Suppose, moreover, that there could have been spread before him the opulent and brilliant vista -of English, literature, that Promised Land for which he was to prepare, but scarcely to enter—suppose that he could have seen in -an unending procession the various nations which own the free hood of the British Crown, and not merely these but those descendants of his sparse subjects who, aggregated ,no doubt from many other races, are yet the central source of tfie American people—that people which, always divided from lis by the Atlantic, and often by differences of. policy and aspiration, cannot, if they will, be wholly separated, and in supreme moments of stress and sorrow irresistibly join hands with us across the centuries and the seas. Suppose, in a word, that he could have beheld as in unfolded tapestry the varying but superb fortunes of that indomitable race bv\ whose cradle he had watched, would he not'have seen in himself one of those predestined beings greater s than the great who seem unconsciously to fashion the destinies and mark the milestones of the world? And as he, looking forward, would have marvelled, so we, looking backward, marvel none the less, but proudly and gratefully consecrate this monument to the memory of Alfred the Good, Alfred the Truth-teller, Alfred the Father of his Country, and ours. (Loud cheers.)