When one reads of the entertainments, the banquetings, the mumming, the music, the gold and silver plate, the cloth of gold, the blaze of color everywhere,--in the hangings, in the coats of arms, in the costumes, in the trappings of the horses,--we must remember that this magnificence was not in those days regarded as ostentation. So to speak of it betrays nineteenth-century prejudice. It is only in this present century that the rich man has been expected to live, to travel, to dress, to entertain, very much like the men who are not so rich. Dives now drives in a carriage little better than that of the physician who attends him. He gives dinners little better than those of the lawyer who conducts his affairs. If he lives in a great house, it is in the country, unseen. To parade and flaunt and exhibit your wealth is, as we now understand [Illustration: HOLBEIN’S GATE AND THE BANQUETING HALL. _From the original Picture by Samuel Scott, in possession of Mr. Andrew Chatto._] things, bad form. In the time of Cardinal Wolsey it was not bad form: it was the right and proper use of wealth to entertain royally; it was the part of a rich man to dress splendidly, to have a troop of gentlemen and valets in his service, to exhibit tables covered with gold and silver plate, to hang the walls with beautiful and costly arras. All this was right and proper. In this way the successful man showed his success to the world; he invited the world to judge how successful he was--how rich, how powerful. A great deal of Wolsey’s authority and power depended upon this outward and visible show. Perhaps he overdid the splendor and created jealousies. Yet kings delighted in seeing the splendor of their subjects. Had the divorce business gone on smoothly, the King might have continued to rejoice in possessing a subject so great and powerful. We have ceased so long from open splendor that we find it difficult to understand it. Imagination refuses to restore the glory of York House, when its walls were hung with tapestry of many colors; when, here and there, in place of tapestry, the walls were hung with cloth of gold, cloth of silver, and cloth of tissue. Where, let me ask, can we find now a single piece of this fine cloth of gold? There were long tables spread with rich stuffs--satin, silk, velvet, damask: where can we find a table now spread with these lovely things? There were sideboards set with the most splendid gold and silver plate: where now can we see gold and silver plate--save at a Lord Mayor’s Dinner? A following of eight hundred people rode with the Cardinal: what noble in the land has such a following now? Alas! the richest and greatest lord that we can produce has nothing but a couple of varlets behind his carriage, and two or three more in his hall, with never a knight or squire or armiger among them. As for the Cardinal himself, when he went abroad he was all scarlet and red and gold and silver gilt. His saddle