Even while the rest of the world remain inert, they are active.

When the arts and improvements of life are stationary among other nations, they are always advancing with _them_.

It is a people that is always making new discoveries, pressing forward to new enterprises, framing new laws, constituting new combinations and developing new powers; until now after the lapse of a thousand years, the little island feeds and clothes, directly or indirectly, a very large portion of the human race, and directs, in a great measure, the politics of the world.
Whether Alfred reasoned upon the capacities of the people whom he ruled, and foresaw their future power, or whether he only followed the simple impulses of his own nature in the plans which he formed and the measures which he adopted, we can not know; but we know that, in fact, he devoted his chief attention, during all the years of his reign, to perfecting in the highest degree the internal organization of his realm, considered as a great social community.

His people were in a very rude, and, in fact, almost half-savage state when he commenced his career.

He had every thing to do, and yet he seems to have had no favorable opportunities for doing any thing.
In the first place, his time and attention were distracted, during his whole reign, by continued difficulties and contentions with various hordes of Danes, even after his peace with Guthrum.