LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

MAP OF ENGLAND ABOUT A. D. 1000 AND AT THE PRESENT
TIME.

KING ALFRED AT THE BATTLE OF ASHDOWN

SEDULOUSLY BENT ON ACQUIRING LEARNING

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frontispiece
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PREFACE.

THE early ages of our country's history have been studied, and written and re-written, with a care and ability which have left nothing to desire. Every source from which light could be drawn has been explored by eminent scholars, and probably all the facts which will ever be known have been now ascertained. Kemble, Palgrave, and Thorpe have been succeeded by Pearson and Freeman, whose great ability and industry every student of those times, however humble, must be able to recognise, and to whom the present writer is anxious to express his deep obligations. Thanks to their labours, whoever takes for his subject any portion of our early national history will find his task one of comparative ease.

And of all that early history the life and times of Alfred are, beyond all question, the most absorbing in interest. The story has been written many times, from different points of view, by natives and foreigners; from Sir John Spelman, the first edition of whose Life of Alfred was published in 1709, to Dr. Pauli, whose

S. L. VIII.

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