the voice, and, having recovered the head by means of this miraculous
guidance, they buried it with the body.[1]

It seems surprising to us that reasonable men should so readily
believe such tales as these; but there are, in all ages of the world,
certain habits of belief, in conformity to which the whole community
go together. We all believe whatever is in harmony with, or analogous
to, the general type of faith prevailing in our own generation. Nobody
could be persuaded now that a dead head could speak, or a wolf change
his nature to protect it; but thousands will credit a fortune-teller,
or believe that a mesmerized patient can have a mental perception of
scenes and occurrences a thousand miles away.

There was a great deal of superstition in the days when Alfred was
called to the throne, and there was also, with it, a great deal of
genuine honest piety. The piety and the superstition, too, were
inextricably intermingled and combined together. They were all
Catholics then, yielding an implicit obedience to the Church of Rome,
making regular contributions in money to sustain the papal authority,
and looking to Rome as the great and central point of Christian
influence and power, and the object of supreme veneration. We have
already seen that the Saxons had established a seminary at Rome, which
King Ethelwolf, Alfred's father, rebuilt and re-endowed. One of the
former Anglo-Saxon kings, too, had given a grant of one penny from
every house in the kingdom to the successors of St. Peter at Rome,
which tax, though nominally small, produced a very considerable sum
in the aggregate, exceeding for many years the royal revenues of the
kings of England. It continued to be paid down to the time of Henry
VIII., when the reformation swept away that, and all the other
national obligations of England to the Catholic Church together.