King Alfred of England | Page 3

Wales, and killed the giants. The chief of them, whose name was
Gogmagog, was hurled by one of Brutus's followers from the summit
of one of the chalky cliffs which bound the island into the sea.
The island of Great Britain is in the latitude of Labrador, which on our

side of the continent is the synonym for almost perpetual ice and snow;
still these wandering Trojans found it a region of inexhaustible verdure,
fruitfulness, and beauty; and as to its extent, though often, in modern
times, called a little island, they found its green fields and luxuriant
forests extending very far and wide over the sea. A length of nearly six
hundred miles would seem almost to merit the name of continent, and
the dimensions of this detached outpost of the habitable surface of the
earth would never have been deemed inconsiderable, had it not been
that the people, by the greatness of their exploits, of which the whole
world has been the theater, have made the physical dimensions of their
territory appear so small and insignificant in comparison. To Brutus
and his companions the land appeared a world. It was nearly four
hundred miles in breadth at the place where they landed, and,
wandering northward, they found it extending, in almost undiminished
beauty and fruitfulness, further than they had the disposition to explore
it. They might have gone northward until the twilight scarcely
disappeared in the summer nights, and have found the same verdure
and beauty continuing to the end. There were broad and undulating
plains in the southern regions of the island, and in the northern, green
mountains and romantic glens; but all, plains, valleys, and mountains,
were fertile and beautiful, and teeming with abundant sustenance for
flocks, for herds, and for man.
Brutus accordingly established himself upon the island with all his
followers, and founded a kingdom there, over which he reigned as the
founder of a dynasty. Endless tales are told of the lives, and exploits,
and quarrels of his successors down to the time of Cæsar. Conflicting
claimants arose continually to dispute with each other for the
possession of power; wars were made by one tribe upon another; cities,
as they were called--though probably, in fact, they were only rude
collections of hovels--were built, fortresses were founded, and rivers
were named from princes or princesses drowned in them, in accidental
journeys, or by the violence of rival claimants to their thrones. The
pretended records contain a vast number of legends, of very little
interest or value, as the reader will readily admit when we tell him that
the famous story of King Lear is the most entertaining one in the whole
collection. It is this:

There was a king in the line named Lear. He founded the city now
called Leicester. He had three daughters, whose names were Gonilla,
Regana, and Cordiella. Cordiella was her father's favorite child. He was,
however, jealous of the affections of them all, and one day he called
them to him, and asked them for some assurance of their love. The two
eldest responded by making the most extravagant protestations. They
loved their father a thousand times better than their own souls. They
could not express, they said, the ardor and strength of their attachment,
and called Heaven and earth to witness that these protestations were
sincere.
Cordiella, all this time, stood meekly and silently by, and when her
father asked her how it was with her, she replied, "Father, my love
toward you is as my duty bids. What can a father ask, or a daughter
promise more? They who pretend beyond this only flatter."
The king, who was old and childish, was much pleased with the
manifestation of love offered by Gonilla and Regana, and thought that
the honest Cordiella was heartless and cold. He treated her with greater
and greater neglect and finally decided to leave her without any portion
whatever, while he divided his kingdom between the other two, having
previously married them to princes of high rank. Cordiella was,
however, at last made choice of for a wife by a French prince, who, it
seems, knew better than the old king how much more to be relied upon
was unpretending and honest truth than empty and extravagant
profession. He married the portionless Cordiella, and took her with him
to the Continent.
The old king now having given up his kingdom to his eldest daughters,
they managed, by artifice and maneuvering, to get every thing else
away from him, so that he became wholly dependent upon them, and
had to live with them by turns. This was not all; for, at the instigation
of their husbands, they put so many indignities and affronts upon him,
that his life at length became an intolerable burden, and finally he