rule at Bamborough over the land between Forth and Tyne. Hence
Northumberland and the Lothians remained more purely English than any
other part of Britain. The people of the South are Saxons: the people of
the West are half Celts; the people of the North and the Midlands are
largely intermixed with Danes; but the people of the Scottish lowlands,
from Forth to Tweed, are almost purely English; and the dialect which we
always describe as Scotch is the strongest, the tersest, and the most
native modern form of the original Anglo-Saxon tongue. If we wish to
find the truest existing representative of the genuine pure-blooded
English race, we must look for him, not in Mercia or in Wessex, but
amongst the sturdy and hard-headed farmers of Tweedside and Lammermoor.




CHAPTER XIV.

THE SAXONS AT BAY IN WESSEX.


Only one English kingdom now held out against the wickings, and that was
Wessex. Its comparatively successful resistance may be set down, in some
slight degree, to the energy of a single man, Ælfred, though it was
doubtless far more largely due to the relatively strong organisation of
the West Saxon state. In judging of Ælfred, we must lay aside the false
notions derived from the application of words expressing late ideas to
an early and undeveloped stage of civilised society. To call him a great
general or a great statesman is to use utterly misleading terms.
Generalship and statesmanship, as we understand them, did not yet exist,
and to speak of them in the ninth century in England is to be guilty of