Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/491

Extraordinary circumstances, and the necessity of arriving at a just understanding of a remarkable man, must furnish my excuse for saying a few words upon a subject which I would gladly have avoided, and for calling in question one of the largest historical misconceptions which I believe has ever been formed. It is not easy to draw out in detail the evidence on which we form, our opinion of character. We judge living men, not from single facts, but from a thousand trifles; and sound estimates of historical persons are pieced together from a general study of their actions, their writings, the description of friends and enemies, from those occasional allusions which we find scattered over contemporary correspondence, from materials which, in the instance of Henry VIII., consist of many thousand documents. Out of so large a mass tolerable evidence would be forthcoming of vicious tendencies, if vicious tendencies had existed. We rise from the laborious perusal with the conviction, rather, that the King's disposition was naturally cold. The indolence and gaiety of early years gave way, when the complications of his life commenced, to the sternness of a statesman engaged in incessant and arduous labours. He had no leisure, perhaps he had little inclination, to attend to the trifles out of which the cords of happy marriages are woven. A Queen was part of the State furniture, existing to be the mother of his children; and children he rather desired officially, than from any wish for them in themselves Except in the single instance of Anne Boleyn, whom he evidently loved, he entered marriage for the