when the mental
exhilarations of hope, youth, and glory, begin to desert him. His
alleged intemperance, however, which the Romans (a peculiarly sober
people) might perhaps exaggerate, and for which he gave the excuse of
a thirst produced by disease contracted in the dungeon of
Avignon--evidently and confessedly did not in the least diminish his
attention to business, which, according to his biographer, was at that
time greater than ever.)--is prudent, wary, provident--reigns a few
weeks--taxes the People, in support of the People, and is torn to
pieces! One day of the rule that followed is sufficient to vindicate his
reign and avenge his memory--and for centuries afterwards, whenever that
wretched and degenerate populace dreamed of glory or sighed for justice,
they recalled the bright vision of their own victim, and deplored the
fate of Cola di Rienzi. That he was not a tyrant is clear in this--when
he was dead, he was bitterly regretted. The People never regret a
tyrant! From the unpopularity that springs from other faults there is
often a re-action; but there is no re-action in the populace towards
their betrayor or oppressor. A thousand biographies cannot decide upon
the faults or merits of a ruler like the one fact, whether he is beloved
or hated ten years after he is dead. But if the ruler has been murdered
by the People, and is then regretted by them, their repentance is his
acquittal.

I have said that the moral of the Tribune's life, and of this fiction,
is not the stale and unprofitable moral that warns the ambition of
an individual:--More vast, more solemn, and more useful, it addresses
itself to nations. If I judge not erringly, it proclaims that, to
be great and free, a People must trust not to individuals but
themselves--that there is no sudden leap from servitude to liberty--that
it is to institutions, not to men, for they must look for reforms that
last beyond the hour--that their own passions are the real despots they
should subdue, their own reason the true regenerator of abuses. With a
calm and a noble people, the individual ambition of a citizen can
never effect evil:--to be impatient of chains, is not to be worthy of
freedom--to murder a magistrate is not to ameliorate the laws. (Rienzi
was murdered because the Romans had been in the habit of murdering
whenever they were displeased. They had, very shortly before, stoned one
magistrate, and torn to pieces another. By the same causes and the same
care