Across the
infinite wastes of time and through all the mists of legend we still
feel the presence in Alfred of this strange and unconscious
self-effacement. After the fullest estimate of our misdeeds we can still
say that our very despots have been less self-assertive than many
popular patriots. As we consider these things we grow more and more
impatient of any modern tendencies towards the enthronement of a more
self-conscious and theatrical ideal. Lord Rosebery called up before our
imaginations the picture of what Alfred would have thought of the vast
modern developments of his nation, its immense fleet, its widespread
Empire, its enormous contribution to the mechanical civilisation of the
world. It cannot be anything but profitable to conceive Alfred as full
of astonishment and admiration at these things; it cannot be anything
but good for us that we should realise that to the childlike eyes of a
great man of old time our inventions and appliances have not the
vulgarity and ugliness that we see in them. To Alfred a steamboat would
be a new and sensational sea-dragon, and the penny postage a miracle
achieved by the despotism of a demi-god.
But when we have realised all this there is something more to be said in
connection with Lord Rosebery's vision. What would King Alfred have said
if he had been asked to expend the money which he devoted to the health
and education of his people upon a struggle with some race of Visigoths
or Parthians inhabiting a small section of a distant continent? What
would he have said if he had known that that science of letters which he
taught to England would eventually be used not to spread truth, but to
drug the people with political assurances as imbecile in themselves as
the assurance that fire does not burn and water does not drown? What
would he have said if the same people who, in obedience to that ideal of
service and sanity of which he was the example, had borne every
privation in order to defeat Napoleon, should come at last to find no
better compliment to one of their heroes than to call him the Napoleon
of South Africa? What would he have said if that nation for which he had
inaugurated a long line of incomparable men of principle should forget
all its traditions and coquette with the immoral mysticism of the man of
destiny?
Let us follow these things by all means if we find them good, and can
see nothing better.
Pages:
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126