blackened and smouldering mass.

At that hour, a solitary boat was gliding swiftly along the Tiber. Rome
was at a distance, but the lurid blow of the conflagration cast its
reflection upon the placid and glassy stream: fair beyond description
was the landscape; soft beyond all art of Painter and of Poet, the
sunlight quivering over the autumnal herbage, and hushing into tender
calm the waves of the golden River!

Adrian's eyes were strained towards the towers of the
Capitol, distinguished by the flames from the spires and domes
around;--senseless, and clasped to his guardian breast, Irene was
happily unconscious of the horrors of the time.

"They dare not--they dare not," said the brave Colonna, "touch a hair of
that sacred head!--if Rienzi fall, the liberties of Rome fall for ever!
As those towers that surmount the flames, the pride and monument
of Rome, he shall rise above the dangers of the hour. Behold, still
unscathed amidst the raging element, the Capitol itself is his emblem!"

Scarce had he spoken, when a vast volume of smoke obscured the fires
afar off, a dull crash (deadened by the distance) travelled to his ear,
and the next moment, the towers on which he gazed had vanished from
the scene, and one intense and sullen glare seemed to settle over the
atmosphere,--making all Rome itself the funeral pyre of THE LAST OF THE
ROMAN TRIBUNES!

The End

Appendix I. Some Remarks on the Life and Character of Rienzi.

The principal authority from which historians have taken their account
of the life and times of Rienzi is a very curious biography, by some
unknown contemporary; and this, which is in the Roman patois of the
time, has been rendered not quite unfamiliar to the French and English
reader by the work of Pere du Cerceau, called "Conjuration de Nicolas
Gabrini, dit de Rienzi," (See for a specimen of the singular blunders
of the Frenchman's work, Appendix II.) which has at once pillaged and
deformed the Roman biographer. The biography I refer to was published
(and the errors of the former editions revised) by Muratori in his great
collection; and has lately been reprinted separately in an improved
text, accompanied by notes of much discrimination and scholastic taste,
and a comment upon that celebrated poem of Petrarch, "Spirito Gentil,"
which the majority of Italian critics have concurred in considering
addressed to Rienzi, in spite of the ingenious arguments to the contrary
by the Abbe de Sade.