the
eyes of the populace, appeared as a perpetual and insolent exhibition of
what they deemed the ill-earned wages of peculation, oppression, and
court-favour. We discover the seduction of this passion for ostentation,
this haughty sense of their power, and this self-idolatry, even among
the most prudent and the wisest of our ministers; and not one but lived
to lament over this vain act of imprudence. To these ministers the noble
simplicity of Pitt will ever form an admirable contrast; while his
personal character, as a statesman, descends to posterity unstained by
calumny.

The houses of Cardinal Wolsey appear to have exceeded the palaces of the
sovereign in magnificence; and potent as he was in all the pride of
pomp, the "great cardinal" found rabid envy pursuing him so close at his
heels, that he relinquished one palace after the other, and gave up as
gifts to the monarch what, in all his overgrown greatness, he trembled
to retain for himself. The state satire of that day was often pointed at
this very circumstance, as appears in Skelton's "Why come ye not to
Court?" and Roy's "Rede me, and be not wrothe."[115] Skelton's railing
rhymes leave their bitter teeth in his purple pride; and the style of
both these satirists, if we use our own orthography, shows how little
the language of the common people has varied during three centuries.

Set up a wretch on high
In a throne triumphantly;
Make him a great state
And he will play check-mate
With royal majesty----
The King's Court
Should have the excellence,
But Hampton Court
Hath the pre-eminence;
And Yorke Place[116]
With my Lord's grace,
To whose magnificence
Is all the confluence,
Suits, and supplications;
Embassies of all nations.

Roy, in contemplating the palace, is maliciously reminded of the
butcher's lad, and only gives plain sense in plain words.

Hath the Cardinal any gay mansion?
Great palaces without comparison,
Most glorious of outward sight,
And within decked point-device,[117]
More like unto a paradise
Than an earthly habitation.
He cometh then of some noble stock?
His father could match a bullock,
A butcher by his occupation.

Whatever we may now think of the structure, and the low apartments of
Wolsey's PALACE, it is described not only in his own times, but much
later, as of unparalleled magnificence; and indeed Cavendish's narrative
of the Cardinal's entertainment of the French ambas