of popular opinion which set against Wolsey immediately after his death almost without an eddy.

And again if that vulgar figure in our history books was the real Wolsey, it is a slighter reproach to the man whom it represents, than to the age which raised a person of such a character out of nothing, to the most powerful position ever occupied by an English statesman. Let it not be thought a slight thing, a thing in the least easy of explanation, that a person of humble origin, actuated only by a mean ambition for power and grandeur, coarse in manner, and profigate in life, vain, impudent, and overbearing, should have arisen as Wolsey rose, unassisted by any influence except what lay in himself and in his own capacities, to be the equal of kings, and for fifteen years the arbiter of Europe. If this be true, it is a fact by itself in history. No hypothesis of his "abilities" will help us through the difficulty; for ability large enough to neutralize so much baseness is not found-let us say so at once and decisively, is not practically found to coëxist with

Yet, notwithstanding infirm places in the evidence, it might remain easily true that Wolsey was in general what he is supposed to have been. General impressions are frequently right, though no satisfactory account can be given of the facts out of which they originate. They may result as a collective effect of a great number of little things, each in itself perhaps trifling, perhaps of a kind not admitting of being adequately expressed in words, and yet together perfectly convincing. Often within our own experience, we form judgments on people's characters from looks, from gestures, from habitual expressions, from slight characteristic anecdotes and a judgment so formed may be thoroughly correct; although, if we try to justify it to a stranger who knows nothing of these things, we find it very difficult to do so, and in the effort, we detect ourselves exaggerating sepa-it. Wicked, indeed, men of high abilities rate points and laying stress on them which they will not bear, merely from the desire to give a sufficient reason for a conclusion which we know in itself to be right. Thus, any thing like a common consent of a man's contemporaries in one opinion about him, although the grounds of that opinion escape investigation, or break down when examined into, remains an evidence for or against him, in most cases, wholly overwhelming; and even when such unanimity exists, as in Wolsey's case, not in his own generation, but in the generation next succeeding him, it is pre-work thrust upon him as he is able to do it; sumptive proof so grave, that if there were no contemporary evidence of another kind, we should admit it at once as conclusive. Such evidence, however, there is, evidence both external and internal; not easy to set aside, making clean against the popular view; and we believe it will be found considerably more easy to explain why the generation which came after him thought of him as they did, than to explain away the contradictions in which we are involved, if we suppose them to have thought correctly.

If many persons hated Wolsey, there were some at least who loved him, who loved him in his greatness and did not forsake him in his fall. The common people loved him. The king loved him. Part, at least, of the council loved him. No fallen minister ever found loyalty more constant in the followers who had gathered round him in his splendor; and human beings are not so constructed as to love deeply what is utterly without claim for being loved.

have been and are; but they are great in their wickedness, and they do not fall before vulgar and little temptations. Even ambition, "the last infirmity of noble minds," is the infirmity of a very second-rate order of nobility, and is but a poor account of the career of any remarkable man. Men of real intellect do not set out into life with a fixed idea of conquering greatness for themselves. It is greatness rather which finds them, taking often no little pains to seek them out. Every man, as he passes into manhood, has

and the able man finds himself, as a matter of course, dragged up, he knows not how, from thing to thing, from step to step, employment after employment forcing itself into the hands best competent to deal with it; till at last he is on the summit of the ladder, and the world moralizes on his ambition. Ambition! The highest step of that ladder in Wolsey's time was but an indifferent place to be ambitious for. There was usually but one step from it to the flooring of the scaf fold. The Anne Boleyns may be ambitious, but not the Wolseys.

If, however, he is not the person which he is said to have been, what was he then? and how came the world so singularly to agree in their judgment upon him? The first of these questions is difficult to answer; the second is, we believe, answered easily, in the peculiar character of the thirty years which succeeded his fall, and in the course of which his reputation settled into its present form. The administration of Wolsey immediately

preceded the convulsions of the reformation; | steeped itself. The causes of the reformaand as no one knew better than he the na- tion, which gave it in fact its terrible vantage ture of what was impending, or the causes ground, he read too clearly in the idleness, which were hurrying it forward, he pursued the sensuality, the worse than profligacy, by a policy with respect to it which offended which the monastic orders in England had equally each of the rival factions. This disgraced themselves so fatally; and his policy, from causes over which he had no whole heart was bent to wash them clean, if control, failed, and came to nothing; the cleansing were possible; if it were impossireformation was left to be carried through by ble, sweep them utterly away. Safe from a violent collision; and the Protestant and visitation, except from ecclesiastics who were Catholic fanatics, between whom, for a time, glad to purchase indemnity for their own the energy of the country became divided, loose doings, by winking at those of others; united to revenge themselves on the memory in many cases safe from any visitation at all, of the common enemy of both. unless from the Pope, which was equivalent to none, the monks had made good use of their opportunities, and were living in acondition which there is no occasion for us to describe.

what would have followed? Protestantism, | them with all readiness as an expiatory victim. as a doctrine, would have been extinguished Some middle party, it might have been exin England. The weight of the country would pected, would have been found of wiser judghave been thrown, at the impending council, ment; and such undoubtedly there was in on the Conservative side, and would have in- his own time, although even among his consured its triumph; while, instead of a Coun- temporaries, also, he had made many enemies. cil of Trent, which enacted into laws the worst The noble lords found difficulty in reconciling extravagances of Catholicism, we should have themselves to seeing a butcher's son towering had a council moderately and judiciously re- above their heads; and Wolsey, as far as we forming, to which the Lutherans would have know did very little towards making it easy been forced to submit; and the course of all for them. A man who went through so much European history would have been different. work as he did, had no leisure for delicate So in this world the greatest things are linked persuasiveness, and he was naturally violent together with the smallest; and the destinies and irritable. Clear-sighted in discussion, of mankind, perhaps for all time, may have and swift in execution, he had little patience hung on the resolution of one stout-hearted with high-born imbecility; and as he was not Spanish woman, who refused, though a Pope afraid to speak blunt truths in blunt language and half the world implored her, to surrender to kings and emperors, he is likely enough her rights as the wife of an English king. not to have been over courteous in his language at the council table.

At it was, the Conservative party in Eng land declined into insignificance, the most capable members of it attaching themselves to one or other of the extremes; and, as we saw before how Wolsey had earned the hatred of the Protestants, so the Papal party never forgave him for those imputations so doubly fatal as urged against them by the leader of their own order. They attributed the actual suppression of the monasteries, and the fatal skill with which it was conducted by Cromwell, to Wolsey's designs, and to lessons learnt in Wolsey's closet; and they surrendered his name, with spiteful pleasure, to the vindictiveness of their adversaries. To the latter, as the greatest of all those prelate statesmen, who so long had "held power in England, he became the type of the haughty, arrogant, overbearing Churchman, in whom," to use the words of Foxe the Martyrologist about him, "was to be seen and noted the express image of the proud, vain-glorious Church of Rome;" whose splendor furnished ready matter for declamatory orations, and could be held up in broad and opposite contrast with the fishermen of the Lake of Galilee. It is easy to see how all this was caused; among ordinary human beings it could not have been otherwise; and thoughtful persons will not allow more weight than is due to the declamation, any more than they will judge hardly the poor preachers who indulged in it. The Smithfield bonfires were indifferent teachers of charity, and the victims and their judges, who to us are alike objects of compassion rather than of anger, could hardly be expected to extend it to one another.

At all events, the Protestants cursed Wolsey as the largest specimen of their worst enemy, and the Catholics made him over to

And yet even among the Privy Council, where he was generally detested, there was a small minority who thought nobly of him, and spoke nobly; and their judgment, which was no doubt the true and just one, would, in ordinary times, have made its way in the after-generation. The offensive manner would have been forgotten: the substantial thing would have received its due tribute of admiration. But the prudent vigor of a powerful statesman was not a virtue which would recommend itself to an age which was agitated by the collision of two parties equally unreasoning: like only recognizes like, and for the years which intervened between the first mention of the divorce of Catharine and the secure establishment of Elizabeth on the throne, the mind of England was undergoing oscillations, in which, though both sides displayed abundant chivalry, enthusiasm, selfdevotion, and other heroical virtues, the quiet words of reason had little chance of being heard. In this period, the historical character of Wolsey shaped itself into the form in which it has ever since remained, and there is little chance that it will now be altered. Himself we will hope that our opinions do not much affect, and if we have constructed out of our imaginations a figure which serves to impress on schoolboys an elementary lesson of morality, he may spare his name to clothe an innocent and useful phantom.

Of what he really was we have indirectly seen something; to describe him truly would be to write some twenty years of European history, which wear the impress of his mind. We English, however, need not look so far to find traits which ought to commend his memory to us-in these democratic days,

least of all when the people, and the peo- | ple's interest, appear to be so much cared for. The administration of Wolsey was a prosperous time for the people, who at that time felt no alarm about "over-legislation;" a fair day's wages for a fair day's work was the law of the land; wages and prices were alike fixed by Act of Parliament, and the lowest sum paid weekly to the unskilled laborer would buy more beef and bread and beer than twenty shillings of our money. And Stowe, in a happy moment, has left us another significant testimony to him. We turn our eyes in a very wrong direction if, to ascertain the merits of a chief minister of a great country, we look to his personal intercourse with the courtiers with whom he came in contact, to the number of his retinue, or the furniture of his palace. This is but to trifle with history; and his character is written, not in these, but in the justice or the injustice of his rule.

"He punished perjury with infamy," says Stowe, "so that in his time it was less used than of long time before. He punished, also, lords, knights, and men of all degrees for riots, for bearing out of wrongs, or for maintenance practised in the countries, whereby the poor lived quietly, and no man durst use boistering for fear of inprisonment, It was a strange matter to see a man not trained up in the laws, to sit in the seat of judgment to pronounce the law; being aided, at the first, by such as, according to ancient customs, did sit as

but an acknowledgment that the work which he was set to do, in all its essential features, he did most excellently; and by the side of this, all outward faults, all insolence of manner, and, if it must be so, even vulgarities, sink into insignificance. If the same intellect which he expended upon the welfare of the England of his own age had been laid out in producing any thing which would have visibly endured to posterity; if it had gone into books which we could ourselves read, or into pictures which we could see, or into any other of the secondary materials upon which the mind of a great man is able to impress itself, our judgments would not stray so wildly; and the visible greatness of the work produced would have taught us long ago to forget the petty blemishes on the surface of the workman's character. But so it is with fuman things. The greatest men of all, those men whose energies are spent, not in constructing immortal mausoleums for their own glory, but in guiding and governing nations wisely and righteously, sink their real being in the life of mankind; the shell and the surface only remain to us, and we deal with them as we see.

Whatever Wolsey tried, as Fox says, he did most admirably, whether it was the distributing justice among the people, or in reining the ambition of the princes of Europe, or the ordering the economy of a court. Even associates with him; but he would not stick to Hall, in spite of himself, has left a tribute to determine sundry causes, neither rightly decided his conduct; which, notwithstanding the innor judged according to law [the law, we suppose, being a little tedious in arriving at i's right de- justice of the language in which it is concision; and peremptory judgment is a little arbi-veyed, is still transparently favorable. The trary, being on the whole in many cases preferable]; and, again, such as were clear cases, [in law, he would some times prohibit the same to pass, call them into judgment, frame an order in controversies, and punish such as came with untrue surmises, as also the judges themselves which had received such surmises, and not well considered of the controversies of the parties. Also, he ordained by the king's commission divers under courts, to hear the complaints, by bill, of poor men, that they might the sooner come by justice; so that wise men have reported never to have seen this realm in better obedience and quiet than it was in the time of his authority and rule; nor justice better administered with indifference."

Sensible persons who will really weigh this passage,) and it would be easy, if we had time, to illustrate it in ample detail from the statutes passed under his administration,) will see cause to reconsider their judgment, if they have allowed it to flow with the common stream; for larger praise could not be given to any governor of any nation. What is it

Civil Service then, as now, was encumbered with unprofitable servants. Incapable members of noble families were hanging upon the court as the idle appendages of it; "and the Cardinal made ordinances concerning it, which be at this day called the Statutes of Eltham, the which, some said, were more profitable than honorable."-Hall, 707.

It was considered," he goes on, "that the great numbers of the yeomen. of the guard were very chargeable, and that there were many officers far stricken in age, which had servants at the court. And so the king was served with their servants, and not with his own servants, which was thought not convenient; whereupon the offi. cers' servants were put out of the court and old officers dismissed, [with pensions,] and put out of wages.

Alas! what sorrow, what lamentation was court! Some said the poor servants were unmade when all these persons should depart the done, and must steal. Some said that they were found of the reversion of the officers' services, so that for them was nothing more set out upon the

dressers, and it was great charity to find them; others said that now they would poll and pill in their counties, and oppress the poor people. Thus every man had his saying."

Very dishonorable, doubtless, all this, in the opinion of persons to whom right and wrong are alike consecrated by antiquity, and abuses overgrown till they are no longer tolerable, are the expanded virtues of the good old times.

the counterparts of each other; the same essential vulgarity of mind displaying itself alternately in the arrogancy of an enormous self-confidence, and in a prostrate imbecility when flung back upon its own resources. The second is what tells most heavily against him in the opinion of serious persons, and on so great a matter we shall of course be able to touch but slightly. We shall be able to see, however, the principles on which he acted; and if our view of his history be a correct one, they will be found remarkably characteristic of him.

First, then, for the matter of the popedom

It may be that Wolsey was unwisely splendid in his outward habits. It may be that, having been born in a poor man's family, he valued the magnificences and pomps of life more highly than they are va--the standard topic of declaration against lued by those to whom such things are fami- him among the early Protestant writers; and liar from their cradles. If it were so, the there is a curious paralogism in their inveccrime is a venial one. But to us his chief tives which is not unamusing. On the one fault appears rather to have been too great a hand, the anti-Christian character of the Rorecklessness of the opinion of others he did man bishop is reflected upon the aspirant to not care to avoid the odium which so much the see. display would inevitably entail upon him; an odium which he ought to have foreseen, and taken measures to escape. And yet his splendor was but one more exhibition of the same nature in him, which was every way great. Prodigally gifted with the most varied powers, with exquisite tastes of all kinds, taste for music, taste for painting, taste for architecture, taste for every thing which was beautiful or magnificent, the vast rewards which were heaped upon him from every court in Europe-rewards not for underhand service, but for honest work honestly doneenabled him to gratify such tastes in the most gorgeous manner; and he did gratify them, and that is all. If he had been born a nobleman, it would have been called honorable and glorious. In the son of the poor man, who had conquered his position, not by divine right of primogeniture, but by his own genius and the grace of God, it was vulgarity and paltry ostentation.

But inasmuch as any attempt at an active picture of what Wolsey was, is beyond our scope, and for the present we desire only to reopen the question whether he has, or has not, been fairly dealt with; this purpose will best be answered by narrowing our compass and confining ourselves to an examination of those special actions which have been made matter of heaviest complaint against him. And of these, perhaps, there will be as many as we shall be able to deal with-his aspirarations after the papacy, his conduct about Queen Catharine's divorce, and the (supposed) abject nature of his behavior in his disgrace.

The first and the last are represented as

To be anti-Christ was bad, but to have desired to become anti-Christ was infinitely monstrous. On the other hand, the outward position of the popedom, the spiritual sovereignty of Europe, with an independent principality attached to it, placed its possessors on a level with crowned heads; and for the butcher's cur to aspire to such a dignity was an enormous audacity. Sweeping our minds clear of this and similar folly, and looking at the thing really as it was, it is hard to say why, if Wolsey felt any ambition to become pope, it was an ambition which he was not at perfect liberty to entertain. Being already a member of the College of Cardinals, from among whom the popes were chosen, why, if he so wished, might he not innocently desire a position which he was so admirably qualified to occupy? The fact happens to be, however, that he desired nothing of the kind; the pontifical throne not at that time being in such a condition that the seat upon it was in any way a thing to be coveted; the name of a power and not the thing, an authority without a sword, a spiritual empire in full mutiny, and the rulers of it left with no weapon to enforce order, except the idle thunders which had become but a vain sound--this was no position for which the first minister of the strongest power in Europe would gladly have exchanged his place, or which he would very readily have accepted, if it had been offered to him. Of course he would have accepted it, because he at one time canvassed for it; but he canvassed for it without his own goodwill, and at the entreaty, and at last at the command, of Henry.

These are not assertions which do not ad