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When Henry VII was looking out in his old age for a rich wife, he despatched Wolsey, to whom the vista of future eminence was just opening, to Flanders, to treat for the hand of a Princess of the Empire. Wolsey, conscious that in such affairs old age brooks no delay, started on his journey and had returned before the King knew that he was gone. By similar energy and shrewd scheming in pursuit of his own aggrandizement, very analogous to that by which Constantine secured the purple, Wolsey elevated himself to the highest subordinate station in his country, and then directed his mind rather to the extension of learning, the encouragement of art, the erection of splendid buildings, and the increase of domestic magnificence, than to an imitation of the warlike pursuits of the ancestors of his monarch; although the disposition of the latter strongly tended in that more physically energetic direction. The noble hall and chapel at Hampton Court and the remains of the colleges which Wolsey founded, still attest his magnificence, his taste, his liberality, and his respect for learning.