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 doubtless the permanent impression of his time, and expressing with deepening melancholy the profound pathos of the wreckage of a life. This intensity of feeling could not have gathered round an ordinary career, but was engendered by the profound conviction that, with the fall of Wolsey, England had entered upon a new course in its national life—a course the end and goal of which no man could foresee. Wolsey had striven to make England powerful in a changing world. He had created forces which he could not restrain within the limits that his prudence had prescribed. There was deeper emotion at the downfall of him who strove to keep the peace than over the sad fate of combatants on either side when once war had been proclaimed. It is only the pen of one who is conscious of living through such a crisis that can be instinct with real feeling and can convey that feeling to after-times.

It is curious to observe that these two instances of Thomas of Canterbury and Wolsey are both cases of men who pursued clear and decided objects, and whose characters consequently detached themselves from the general background of contemporary life. The objects which they pursued were not in either case popular, and they had to trust mainly to their own resoluteness and skill for ultimate success. Hence came the attraction of their characters for their biographers. They were men who could be studied and described in themselves, apart from the results of their actions. In fact, any estimate of, or sympathy with, their line of action was entirely secondary to the interest of the men themselves. In