comfort himself that virtue is sometimes highly rewarded. But there are questions which will immediately occur to men of ordinary sense, and to which they will demand a satisfactory answer before they consent to surrender their convictions to the most bland and graceful of historians. When Cromwell entered Wolsey's service, he was a thriving merchant, but no more; when he entered the king's service, on the death of the cardinal, he had given up business. To live at court, and that so splendid and extravagant as the court of Henry VIII., required a fortune; the mere presents that every minister must distribute-the New Year's gift alone-would have swallowed up a moderate income. His official emoluments as secretary of state were of the scantiest kind; yet we find him early launching out into great expenses. Within a few years he has five establishments,-one at Austin Friars, another at Hackney, another at Stepney, another at Mortlake, another at Canonbury, besides his official residence at the Rolls. At Austin Friars, Hackney, and Stepney, he was carrying on extensive repairs and buildings all at the same time, and employing upon each of them from fifty to seventy workmen at 6d. a day. Not long after he was erecting a mansion at Ewhurst, of which his steward reports that it was "the goodliest and the mightiest he had ever seen." He kept froma three to four stewards, he had a staff of clerks, servants, hunters, hawks, and all the expensive impedimenta of a noble establishment. In July 1537 the expense of his household, not to mention wages, was 101l. 13s. ; in August, 981. 9s. 64d.; in September, 2401.* Next year, in the same month, it had increased to 300l., not including 1331. 6s. Sd. for provisioning Lewes priory, which had then come into his hands. On the 19th November 1537 he paid 2000l. for a diamond and a ruby. In June 1538 he purchased Sir George Somerset's house at Kew; in November following, the manor of Brampton for 1000l. In January the next year he bought the demesnes of the priory of Folkestone; next month the manor of Holden for 34501. The same year he lent Gastwick 2000, the year before, 22531., for the king's use. Besides these outlays he lost money at dice and cards, in sums varying from 20s. to 201. Nor were his outgoings as a courtier inconsiderable. On the birth of Prince Edward he gave the messenger 6l. 13s 4d.; to the ladies attending on the prince, 201.; and 31. 10s. to the poor of St. James. To the king he presented a gold cup, and an "outlandish beast" with a velvet collar; to the poor queen herself his new-year's gift in 1537 was a cup of gold and These sums must be multiplied by ten to bring them near to modern compu

tation.

22. 10s. With these exceptions, his liberality was most conspicuous to the Princess Mary. In 1537 he sent her 241. as a new-year's gift, then 117. 5s., and immediately after 6l.; and next month, as her "fallantyne" (valentine), 15. In November of the same year he paid Wriothesley 381. 6s. 8d. "to make my Lady Mary a new-year's gift," and in December "a salt of gold and 10 sovereigns." Her only acknowledgment of this bounty was "a dish of quinces," for which the minister rewarded the bearer with 5s. Whether she remained inexorable, or money grew scarce, her next new-year's gifts were only 11l. 5s. Besides these he was fond of masques. In the January of 1539 he exhibited a masque before the court which cost him 30l. 7s. 6d.,—the stuff, 13. 17s. 11d., the copper-plates and disguises, 91. 2s. 1d.; and among the curious items is one of 21s. 2d. "paid for the trimming of Divine Providence when she played before the king." To Woodhall, the schoolmaster of Eton, he gave 5l. for playing before him at Christmas; and to Bole, afterwards bishop of Ossory, and his fellows, on a similar occasion, 30s.; to Grafton, the furnisher, 101. for masks. His installation as Knight of the Garter, in 1537, cost 251.; his gown, 61. 13s. 4d., his collar and George, 71. 6s.*

When churchmen were ministers, the scanty emoluments of office were supplemented by bishoprics; but Cromwell could enjoy no such advantages. Henry was not unkind to his virtues, and he had numerous grants from the crown; but such grants brought in little ready money, certainly none adequate for such heavy expenses. Then, how were these expenses defrayed? A glance at his correspondence explains. In Wolsey's service he had learned to take douceurs,-we should call them bribes, to obtain the cardinal's favours for suitors. When he became chief minister to Henry VIII., he continued the practice; and his letters furnish ample evidence of the extent to which this practice was carried. His appointments as visitor and as vicar-general gave him ample opportunities of enriching himself by indirect means; and the numerous applications made to him afford ample indications-even if we had not his private accounts to produce-that his virtue was not impregnable. Sir Ant. Cope writes to him to say that seven convicts had escaped from the Bishop of Lincoln's prison in Banbury; and this will be a good opportunity to extort from the bishop

* There are other curious items for which we cannot afford space; e. g. such as "two ribbands for his George, 8d., and a lace for his spectacles, 4d.; two stools to set his legs on, 1s., and 20d, for a pewter pot to wash a running sore with which he was troubled," like his master. He was by no means conspicuous for charity. His alms in 1537 were 8d. to a poor woman in March; 8d. to two poor men in July; 1s. to three poor women, and 2d. at Christmas. Next year he was more liberal, but chiefly to the poor of Putney.

the fee-farm of the hundred of Banbury, which he holds of the king, and bestow it on one of Cromwell's friends; and he ends with offering Cromwell 200l. to obtain it for him. Sir Simon Harcourt writes to him to procure him from the king a little house of Canons in Staffordshire: "His grace shall have 100%., and your mastership, if it be brought to pass, 1007. for your pain, and 201. fee so long as you live." But if it be dissolved, and Cromwell can obtain the grant of its farm for the petitioner, he will give him 100 marks. Thos. Candell offers him, when privy seal, 10l. to obtain the king's patent and seal for a friar's house and lands. Lady Mary Capell offers him 207. to buy a hobby, if he will get the arrears of her annuity paid up. Sir Piers Eggecombe desires a grant of the suppressed priory of Totness. He offers the king 800 marks for it, and Cromwell a present of 100l. to procure the king's favour. He obtains his request, and then asks for two manors in Devonshire. A wretched constable employed by him as a visitor of the religious houses begs him to stay the conclusion of a bargain between one Broke and the abbot of Bardsley. "Hear me speak or you conclude with him: it shall be in the way of 200 marks." Archbishops and bishops, noblemen and widows, purchased his smiles with eager hands. The black-mail which he levied under the name of new-year's gifts, fees, and annuities, was enormous: 401. a year from Cranmer, 20l. a year from the other bishops, and 10l. a year besides in the shape of a new year's gift; sums of 2l., 5., 10l., and 201. from most of the abbeys and priories in England; 40%. from the Earl of Wiltshire, 20. from Queen Jane Seymour, the same from the unhappy Countess of Salisbury; 201. from Dr. Lee, the same from Dr. Leighton, and 10%. from Dr. Landon, his visitors of the monasteries. The entries in his steward's book reveal the same tale 6. 13s. 4d. in a little white purse; "in a pair of gloves," 13l. 6s. Sd.; "in a handkercher," 667. 13s. 4d.; "in a black velvet purse," 201.; and 107. "with a purse of silver and gilt." "A purse of crimson satin," containing 661. 13s. 4d.; in "another crimson satin purse," 201.; 207. "in a white paper;" 201. "in a glove under the cushion in the gallery window;" "under a cushion in the middle window in the gallery," 10. "Under the cushion in the gallery window, in a purse of white leather," 100l.; "the same day 501. in a purse of red leather;" "in a purse of white leather," 10l. ;—all lying close together in those eventful months, when nobles and peasantry were dissipating and plundering the abbey lands.

We might enlarge these instances almost to any amount. The poor monks at Canterbury, who paid him an annuity for his protection, had a summer's residence at Bekesborne, the

envy of the neighbourhood. The king was desirous to have it, and offered the prior any lands of equivalent value in exchange. In great trepidation he laid his griefs before the minister; the monks could not consent to part with it on any terms, it was their only place of recreation, nothing could be an equivalent for its loss. The powerful intercession of the minister saved it from the clutches of the crown, and the monks were profuse in their gratitude: but in his very next letter he demanded and obtained a lease of it for himself. Pensions and annuities from abbots and priors trembling for existence; presents of money from grasping squires and nobles eager to clutch at the prey and forestall each other; hampers of game, fish, and poultry; eggs, cheeses, and venison pasties from less wealthy suitors, all anxious to bespeak the favour of this man, more powerful than the king himself, poured in at his gates. The venison sent him fed his servants and saved his butcher's bills, as his thrifty steward informs him ;-if it got a little damaged by the journey, it was baked in a pie, and that was food for the man which was no food for his master. For though he rose to the highest offices in the state, and his income was enormous, the business-like habits and frugality of the merchant still reigned in his heart and his household. No wonder whilst the minister grew wealthy the crown grew poor. It was thought a great thing that Cardinal Wolsey, once in his magnificent administration, with foreign wars and continual loans to Maximilian, to Charles, and after his captivity to Francis I., should have once demanded a subsidy from the House of Commons; now, in a period of profound peace, with parliamentary subsidies, the enormous fines paid by the clergy to escape the premunire, with annatys and first-fruits, which had hitherto rolled a stream of gold to Rome, all turned into the exchequer, the king "woke up," after six years, to find himself on the eve of a rebellion, with no funds to meet it, unless he melted his plate and sold his jewels.

These details are not taken from Protestant or from Popish legends, so much deprecated by Mr. Froude; they are not the blind suggestions of malice and envy; they are derived from an authority which Mr. Froude himself will not dispute -Cromwell's own correspondence. We do not contend that they present the whole account of the matter, and that Cromwell's character is to be judged by these facts alone, to the exclusion of others: that would be to fall into the fault we condemn. But whether they bear out Mr. Froude's views, and whether an impartial historian ought to have ignored them, our readers can decide for themselves.

ART. VII.-MR. BROWNING'S POEMS.

The Poetical Works of Robert Browning. Three volumes. Third Edition. Chapman and Hall.

MR. BROWNING, though commanding a wider intellectual sweep of view than almost any artist of our day, is yet a poet not of European, nor even of national celebrity, but rather the favourite of an intellectual sect; and this, not from any sectarian tendency in his poetry,-nothing could be more catholic, —but from the almost complete absence of that atmosphere of fascination about his verse, that melody of mind and speech, which is the main attraction of poetry to ordinary men, and but for which, mere imaginative power, however great, would scarcely arrest their attention at all. Coleridge once defined poetry very badly we conceive-as "that species of composition which is opposed to works of science, by proposing for its immediate object pleasure, not truth; and from all other species (having this object in common with it) it is discriminated by proposing to itself such delight from the whole as is compatible with a distinct gratification from each component part." Now Coleridge certainly did not intend to exclude Mr. Browning's works by anticipation from all claim to the title of poems; if he had lived to read Mr. Browning, Coleridge's profound, rich, and catholic imagination would scarcely have failed to appreciate fully the power and insight of the younger poet; but no definition of a poem could have been contrived more ingeniously calculated to exclude Mr. Browning's works from that class of composition. Most of Mr. Browning's poems might be described precisely as proposing for their immediate object truth, not pleasure, and as aiming at such a satisfaction from the whole as is by no means compatible with any very distinct gratification from each component part.' In other words, Mr. Browning's poems, though, when clearly apprehended, they seldom fail to give that higher kind of imaginative satisfaction which is one of the most enviable intellectual states,-give scarcely any immediate sensitive pleasure. There is none of the thrill through the brain, of the vibrating melodious sweetness, of the tranquillising touch and atmosphere of loveliness which we usually associate with the highest powers of poetical expression. And then, as to the relation of the whole to the part, which is Coleridge's second test of a poem, Mr. Browning's poems are not so organised that the parts have any gratification for you at all, till you catch a view of his whole. Coleridge says, that "the reader should be carried forward, not