[Illustration: "Go to," Norfolk and Suffolk!]

The first difficulty that HENRY IRVING had to face--literally to
face--was that by no sort of art could he make up his features to
be an exact portrait of CARDINAL WOLSEY. Personally, I prefer Mr.
IRVING's picture of WOLSEY to the extant portraits, which concur in
representing him as a heavy, jowly-faced man, who might be taken as
a model for one of GUSTAVE DORÉ'S eccentric-looking ecclesiastics in
the _Contes Drolatiques_, rather than as the living presentment of the
great Chancellor, Statesman, and Churchman who ruled a cruel, crafty,
sensual tyrant, and successfully guided the policy of England at home
and abroad. HENRY IRVING's _Cardinal_ is a grand figure, courtly,
though somewhat too cringing withal, evidently despising the various
means he uses to further the end he has in view, and looking upon the
Lords, Courtiers and all around him as merely puppets, whose strings
he holds to work them as he will.

[Illustration: The Cardinal's _Train de Luxe_.]

Then, after seeing him as Sole Adviser of the Crown, after seeing him
as Highest Judge in the Ecclesiastical Divorce Court in such splendid
state as our Judge JEUNE may eye with envy, after seeing him in his
own Palace, most courteous as Grand Master and liberal Provider of
Right Royal Revels, he is exhibited to us in the deserted Hall, a
spectacle for gods and men (that is, shown to the Gallery and the rest
of the audience), the single figure of the Great Cardinal, fallen from
his high estate; and to him, in place of all his princely retinue,
comes his one faithful servant, CROMWELL, supporting his dying master,
for dying he is, as he staggers feebly from the Palace at Bridewell.