Vigorous in war and active in peace, Constantine united all the characteristics of the Roman and the Greek. In war he successfully opposed both civil and foreign enemies, and made himself master of the most extended empire Rome had ever designated by her name. While in the vigour of his age, he moved with slow dignity, or with active vigilance, according to the various exigencies of peace and war, along the frontiers of his extensive dominions, and was always prepared to take the field either against a foreign or a domestic enemy. But when he had gradually reached the summit of prosperity and the decline of life, he became sensible of the ambition of founding a city which might perpetuate the glory of his name, and he then exhibited all the capacities for the enjoyment of the luxuries of peace which had hitherto lain dormant in his mind. The mere building and fortifying a city, which would have satisfied the ambition of the coarser-minded Roman, was not his ambition only. He desired to decorate it with the highest efforts of human genius, and make it not only a monument of his military prowess, but also of his taste and refinement. For this purpose he founded schools of architecture to supply the disparity which his fine taste detected between the degenerate artists of his time and those of early Greece. The immortal productions of Phidias and Lysippus were dragged from other countries to adorn his capital; and, unmindful of the injustice, he despoiled the cities of Greece and Asia of their most valuable ornaments. The trophies of memorable wars, the objects of religious veneration, the most finished statues of the gods and heroes, of the sages and poets of ancient times, contributed to the splendid triumph of Constantinople.[13] The character of WOLSEY was very similar to that of Constantine. We might almost venture to assert that had he been placed in the same situation he would have pursued the same course. Yet the only part of their physiognomies which assimilates are their Noses. One remarkable circumstance in the early life of each identifies the two men, and exhibits in them the union of energy with acute tact. Constantine, half assured of his elevation to the Imperial throne, if he could join his father’s army and be present with him in case of his death, and having with difficulty obtained permission to visit his father from Galerius, (who dreaded the same event, and delayed the permission, until he believed it would be impossible for him to accomplish his object), travelled post through Bithynia, Dacia, Thracia, Pannonia, Italy and Gaul, with such speed that he reached Boulogne in the very moment when his father was preparing to embark for Britain, accompanied him, and finally, by military election, succeeded to his share of the Empire.