Though we are therefore compelled, most unwillingly, to express an opinion against the probable immortality of M. Von Feinaigle's art, we are anxious, from a full conviction of its substantial merit, to preserve its existence by every method which our humble powers can suggest. We have attended a course of the Professor's lectures, from which we received much entertainment and information, exclusive of the undeniable advantages to be derived from the application of the system; and we have great pleasure in bearing our testimony to the clear and unaffected manner in which he delivers his instructions, to the readiness with which he answers every objection and explains every difficulty, and to the liberality with which he opens every future course to his former pupils. The system itself, when orally communicated, is adapted to the meanest capacity: besides being infinitely serviceable in the more important subjects, to which other systems have been usually confined, it can with equal facility be used in the common transactions of ordinary life; and its application, as none who have heard his lectures will deny, is rather a source of amusement than of labour. It possesses all the advantages of the preceding methods, and as a whole is superior to any that have yet appeared.

Under these impressions, we can honestly recommend those of our readers, who have the requisite leisure, to attend a course of the lectures. That they may enter on it uninfluenced by any prejudice against the subject, we would advise them not to trust themselves with a perusal of the volume before us, at least till after they have received the Professor's instructions, which alone can make it intelligible. The first 220 pages contain an analysis of the different works on the subject of artificial memory, some of which are given entire. This part of the publication is certainly not devoid of entertainment, and proves that the editor is both assiduous and skilful in compilation: but we doubt whether any real benefit from it can be derived to his readers, adequate to the disproportionate increase of the volume which the introduction of these abstracts occasions. A short account is given, at the conclusion, of several persons who have exhibited extraordinary powers of natural memory;' commencing with Hortensius in 115 B. C., and concluding with Jedediah Buxton, in A. D. 1751, whose portrait is added. The detail of the system, which gives the title to the book, is the most unsatisfactory part of it. To this charge, the compiler may answer that an attendance on one course of the lectures could scarcely enable him to give a fuller account, and that no better has yet been furnished to the public: but we may reply that, notwithstand

ing

ing these reasons, many persons will charge him with illibe rality in making the present use of the Professor's instructions, and all will accuse him of something like presumption in supposing himself to be capable of explaining the principles of an art so difficult to be described, and of such various application, after so limited an attendance on the original inculcator.

ART. V. The Life and Administration of Cardinal Wolsey. By John Galt.

[Article concluded from our last Number, p. 351.]

AMID the transactions to which we have adverted in our

former article, an incident occurred which we do not recollect to have seen elsewhere mentioned, but which amply deserves notice, and reflects the highest credit on the Cardinal. At the time of which we are speaking, the law of hereditary succession had not been established in Denmark, any more than in other northern states: but the successor was elected from among the members of the reigning family, and was not invariably although usually the heir-apparent. Mr. Galt justly observes that, even in England,

In the reign of Henry VIII., the right of blood does not appear to have been considered as essential in the succession. For he was allowed to dispose of the crown by will, and actually excluded his eldest sister's heirs from the right of succeeding. The English constitution, indeed, appears, generally, to have very distinctly recog nized the supreme and ultimate authority of the people, and to have held the monarchs entitled to the throne only so long as they fulfilled their engagements. The opinion of Wolsey as to the obligation of kings, and the power of lords and commons, is now an acknowledged maxim, both in the theory and practice of the constitution.'

• Christern II., who married the Emperor's sister, Isabella, and niece to the Queen of England, was, at this time, King of Denmark. During the life of his father, and while only seven years old, he had been elected to succeed to the crown. Whether this was considered by the electors as a favour which entitled them to impose new restric tions on the royal prerogatives, or that the old King, with a view of laying the foundations of a regular hereditary succession in his own family, had conceded that his son should be more limited in power than his predecessors, is of no importance to ascertain; but Christern, after his accession, thought, as the restraints upon him were greater than customary on the kings of Denmark, and having been incurred without his consent, that he was not bound to abide by them. Instead, however, of resigning the crown, as he, therefore, ought to have done, he so acted that the electors were obliged to declare that he had violated the conditions on which he held it. In consequence, they proclaimed the throne vacant, and elected his uncle into the sovereignty.

< Christern left the country, with his family, and took refuge in the Netherlands, expecting from the powerful relations of his wife, such assistance as might enable him to recover the throne. They afterwards came over to England, and were received by the court with the distinction due to them as the near relations of the Queen. Upon his soliciting aid, however, the Cardinal advised him to repair, without delay, to his patrimonial dominions, and try, by beneficial conduct, to recover the good opinion of the Danes, and a reconciliation with his enemies in Denmark. He assured him that Henry and Charles would use their best persuasion, both by letters and ministers, to the electors, the new King, and the influential lords of the realm, to procure his restoration; and that, out of the respect which Henry had for Isabella, his niece, he would, as an inducement, offer to guarantee to the Danish states, the reformation of those abuses of which they complained, and for which they had deposed him. The Cardinal also added, that the English residentiary at Rome should be immediately instructed to apply to the Pope for his interposition, by briefs and exhortations, in order to accomplish the restoration.

But if these fair and equitable means fail of effect, then others shall be tried. For it is disreputable," said he, "to reason and good sense, that a prince should, by the wilfulness of his lords and commons, be expelled from his kingdom, without having first given an answer to a statement of their grievances." With these assurances, Christern departed, and Wolsey immediately concerted the means for realizing the expectations that he had cherished; but, in the end, the cause was necessarily abandoned.'

We fully agree with Mr. Galt in his reflections on this

event,

On account of the insight which it affords to the Cardinal's political notions. His expressions on the occasion are, indeed, so extraordinary, considering his situation, and the period in which he lived, that, if he had not, under his own hand, furnished the record, they might justly be questioned, having never before been particularly noticed by any historian.'

Although the most be made of this occurrence of wise and constitutional conduct, it is unfortunately but a solitary instance, and cannot purge the Cardinal from those sins of omission and commission which must have embittered his fall, and which continue to weigh down his memory. If in the transaction with the Danish king, he set an example which in this age a heaven-born minister was not wise enough to follow, we cannot forget that he suffered his youthful and inexperienced master to be successively made the dupe of the Popes Julius II. and Leo X., and of his father-in-law Ferdinand; nor that he instigated him so long to delay the restoration of Tournay; nor his shameless bargain with Sforza, of the revenues secured to him by Charles; nor his indemnity from the French regent; nor his unwarrantable conduct in the case of the Spanish ambassador;

nor

nor the extravagant pomp which made him a subject of ridicule to his contemporaries; nor his oppressions and rapacity; nor that he encouraged Henry to dispense with Parliaments or to supersede their authority. Though Mr. Galt may sincerely be of opinion that, in Wolsey's ever-varying conduct towards Charles V. and Francis I., the interests of England and of Europe were always uppermost in his mind, we think that a very different line would have been pursued, and that a very different result would have followed, had not Wolsey, in the enviable situation in which he was placed, been induced by the cunning and the bribes of Charles V. to depart from his duty to his King and his country.

It is in vain to say that no guilt is imputable to Wolsey because Henry was privy to all the gratuities and pensions bestowed on him, and to the ignominious traffic which this unprincipled churchman carried on with every state that had any transactions with his sovereign. If Henry did not feel the disgrace which these shameful measures brought on himself, -if he shut his eyes to or was regardless of the consequences,-how does this take away from the baseness and infamy of Wolsey? Were the pensions and grants on that account less the wages of corruption? Would the foreign princes have conferred them, if they had expected no fruit to be their produce? Would they have continued, renewed, and added to them, if they had not found their purposes in them answered? We are too near the times of Wolsey, the events in which he was engaged are placed too much in open day, the evidence that convicts him. is too clear, the instruments which secured the price of his treachery exist, and public opinion and the voice of history are and always have been too decided on the subject, to admit of the chimerical attempt to depict Wolsey as a faithful, upright, minister, appearing in any degree plausible. It would have been as easy for his Eminence in his day to have attained the so-muchdesired pontificate, as it is for his present biographer to invest him with any honest and honourable reputation: but it is not with respect to Wolsey alone that Mr. Galt volunteers paradoxes. He sports one far less venial in the following passage, which is to be found in a note at p 107.:

I cannot understand how Sir Thomas More ever came to be considered so highly among the worthies of England as he commonly is. He seems to have been a pleasant-tempered man ; but much of his agreeable qualities arose from an excessive disposition to flatter. During the time he was chancellor, he was fully as complaisant to the King's humours as any of his previous ministers. His literary works have no great merit. I never could muster patience enough to read his Utopia. I suspect that much of his celebrity has arisen from his life having been written by his son-in-law.'

REY. MAY, 1813.

E.

On

On the subject of his biography, Mr. Galt bestows his warm admiration, while he thus expresses himself of a cotemporary who has been as unanimously admired as Wolsey has been reprobated; and such is the light in which he views the man who has been universally represented as the brightest ornament of the age, the fine genius, the finished scholar, graced with every virtue, adorned with various accomplishments, of unbending integrity, the incomparable magistrate, and the martyr to his principles; mistaken principles, it is true, but honestly entertained by him. It must, however, be owned that it is in character for the panegyrist of Wolsey to be the detractor of Sir Thomas More. To apply the same language to both these personages would, we admit, have a strange appearance: but Mr. Galt is not chargeable with the inconsistency.

Although the more than royal splendour of the Cardinal's style of living is far better known than his character of a faithful and upright minister, under which he is described in the present volume, still our article would be imperfect without some reference to this feature in his life. In the ensuing sketch, an attempt is made to state his revenues, and to give us an idea of his style of living:

Wolsey had attained the meridian of his fortune. In every transaction abroad, his name was mentioned and his influence felt. The learned and the artists of all countries came trooping to his gates, and the kingdom resounded with the fame of his affluence, and the noise of the buildings which he was erecting to luxury and knowledge. His revenues, derived from the fines in the legatine court, the archbishopric of York, the bishopric of Winchester, and the abbey of St. Alban's, with several other English bishoprics, which were held by foreigners, but assigned to him at low rents for granting them the privilege of living abroad, together with his pensions from Charles and Francis, the emoluments of the chancellorship, the revenues of the bishoprics of Badajos and Placentia, in Spain, with rich occasional presents from all the allies of the King, and the wealth and domains of forty dissolved monasteries, formed an aggregate of income equal to the royal revenues. His house exhibited the finest productions of art, which such wealth could command in the age Leo X. The walls of his chambers were hung with cloth of gold, and tapestry still more precious, representing the most remarkable. events in sacred history, for the easel was then subordinate to the loom. His floors were covered with embroidered carpets, and sideboards of cypress were loaded with vessels of gold. The sons of the nobility, according to the fashion of the age, attended him as pages; and the daily service of the household corresponded to the opulence and ostentation of the master.

of

The entertainment which the Cardinal gave at Hampton Court to the French commissioners, who were sent to ratify the league, offensive and defensive, exceeded in splendor every banquet which

had,