make government more impersonal; we only identify the whole body of the people more entirely with its methods and its aims. Men must always be led by men, and leaders should always be saddled with any sense of the responsibility which attaches to leadership. There are great dangers attaching to the possession of power. Those who are entrusted with it soon discover how far-reaching those dangers are. It is a real support to them to feel that they will be judged by a higher standard than that of their immediate success. We often learn more from the contemplation of a man's feelings than we do from the recognition of his merits. I do not think that we are acting ungenerously to great men of the past if we attempt to take into account not merely their definite achievements, but their influence on the conscience of their time. Great men and small alike need to reminded that they should walk circumspectly.
It is an excellent feature of the present day that we express our national spirit in commemoration of great men and of great events. Let us be careful in so doing to speak the truth and nothing but the truth. The proposed commemoration of King Alfred seems to me of singular interest as illustrating some of the principles which I have been striving to enforce. Alfred is a national hero on many grounds; not only is he surrounded with a halo of romance, but his character is free from stain. He is a type of the consolidation of the English kingdom—he is familiar as a warrior, a statesman, and a legislator—but, more than all this, he was a man who united practical capacity with lofty aspirations for the moral well-
