They did burn York Minster, or at least, places of the same kind.
Roughly speaking, from the seventh century to the tenth, a dense tide
of darkness, of chaos and brainless cruelty, poured on these islands
and on the western coasts of the Continent, which well-nigh cut them
off from all the white man's culture for ever. And this is the final
human test; that the varied chiefs of that vague age were remembered
or forgotten according to how they had resisted this almost cosmic raid.
Nobody thought of the modern nonsense about races; everybody thought
of the human race and its highest achievements. Arthur was a Celt,
and may have been a fabulous Celt; but he was a fable on the right side.
Charlemagne may have been a Gaul or a Goth, but he was not a barbarian;
he fought for the tradition against the barbarians, the nihilists.
And for this reason also, for this reason, in the last resort, only,
we call the saddest and in some ways the least successful of the Wessex
kings by the title of Alfred the Great. Alfred was defeated
by the barbarians again and again, he defeated the barbarians again
and again; but his victories were almost as vain as his defeats.
Fortunately he did not believe in the Time Spirit or the Trend of
Things or any such modern rubbish, and therefore kept pegging away.
But while his failures and his fruitless successes have names still in use
(such as Wilton, Basing, and Ashdown), that last epic battle which really
broke the barbarian has remained without a modern place or name.
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