Excerpt from The Dragon and the Raven: Or the Days of King Alfred Living in the present days of peace and tran quillity it is difficult to picture the life of our ancestors in the days of King Alfred, when the whole country was for years overrun by hordes Of pagan barbarians, who slaughtered, plundered, and destroyed at will. You may gain, perhaps, a fair conception Of the state of things if you imagine that at the time Of the great mutiny the English population Of India approached that of the natives, and that the mutiny was every where triumphant. The wholesale massacres and out rages Which would in such a case have been inflicted upon the conquered whites could be no worse than those suffered by the Saxons at the hands of the Danes. From this terrible state of subjection and suffering the Saxons were rescued by the prudence, the patience, the valour and Wisdom of King Alfred. In all subsequent ages England has produced no single man who united in himself so many great qualities as did this the first Of great Englishmen. He was learned, wise, brave, prudent, and pious; devoted to his people, element to his conquered enemies. He was as great in. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.