But though Wolsey was not successful in his method of making the royal power supreme over Parliament, he took the blame of failure upon himself, and saved the king's popularity. Wolsey's devotion to his master was complete, and cannot be assigned purely to selfish motives. Wolsey felt that his opinions, his policy, his aspirations had been formed through his intercourse with the king; and he was only strong when he and his master were thoroughly at one. At first the two men had been in complete agreement, and it cost Wolsey many a pang when he found that Henry did not entirely agree with his conclusions. After the imperial alliance was made Wolsey lost much of his brilliancy, his dash, and his force. This was not the result of age, or fatigue, or hopelessness so much as of the feeling that he and the king were no longer in accord. Like many other strong men, Wolsey was sensitive. He did not care for popularity, but he felt the need of being understood and trusted. He gave the king his affection, and he craved for a return. There was no one else who could understand him or appreciate his aims, and when he felt that he was valued for his usefulness rather than trusted for what he was in himself, the spring of his life's energy was gone. Still Wolsey laboured in all things to exalt the royal power, for in it he saw the only hope of the future, and England endorsed his opinion. But Wolsey was too great a man to descend to servility, and Henry always treated him with respect. In fact Wolsey always behaved with a strong sense of his personal dignity, and carried stickling for decorum to the verge of punctiliousness. Doubtless he had a decided taste for splendour and magnificence, but it is scarcely fair to put this down to the arrogance of an upstart, as was done by his English contemporaries. Wolsey believed in the influence of outward display on the popular mind, and did his utmost to throw over the king a veil of unapproachable grandeur and unimpeachable rectitude. He took upon himself the burden of the king's responsibilities, and stood forward to shield him against the danger of losing the confidence of his people. As the king's representative he assumed a royal state; he wished men to see that they were governed from above, and he strove to accustom them to the pomp of power. In his missions abroad, and in his interviews with foreign ambassadors, he was still more punctilious than in the matters of domestic government. If the king was always to be regarded as the king, Wolsey, as the mouthpiece of the royal will, never abated his claims to honour only less than royal; but he acted not so much from self-assertion as from policy. At home and abroad equally the greatness of the royal power was to be unmistakably set forth, and ostentation was an element in the game of brag to which a spirited foreign policy inevitably degenerates. It was for the king's sake that Wolsey magnified