l around him in a certain mystery, was his
religious enthusiasm. The daring but wild doctrines of Arnold of
Brescia, who, two centuries anterior, had preached reform, but
inculcated mysticism, still lingered in Rome, and had in earlier youth
deeply coloured the mind of Rienzi; and as I have before observed,
his youthful propensity to dreamy thought, the melancholy death of his
brother, his own various but successful fortunes, had all contributed
to nurse the more zealous and solemn aspirations of this remarkable
man. Like Arnold of Brescia, his faith bore a strong resemblance to the
intense fanaticism of our own Puritans of the Civil War, as if similar
political circumstances conduced to similar religious sentiments. He
believed himself inspired by awful and mighty commune with beings of the
better world. Saints and angels ministered to his dreams; and without
this, the more profound and hallowed enthusiasm, he might never
have been sufficiently emboldened by mere human patriotism, to
his unprecedented enterprise: it was the secret of much of his
greatness,--many of his errors. Like all men who are thus self-deluded
by a vain but not inglorious superstition, united with, and coloured by,
earthly ambition, it is impossible to say how far he was the visionary,
and how far at times he dared to be the impostor. In the ceremonies of
his pageants, in the ornaments of his person, were invariably introduced
mystic and figurative emblems. In times of danger he publicly professed
to have been cheered and directed by divine dreams; and on many
occasions the prophetic warnings he announced having been singularly
verified by the event, his influence with the people was strengthened by
a belief in the favour and intercourse of Heaven. Thus, delusion of
self might tempt and conduce to imposition on others, and he might not
scruple to avail himself of the advantage of seeming what he believed
himself to be. Yet, no doubt this intoxicating credulity pushed him
into extravagance unworthy of, and strangely contrasted by, his soberer
intellect, and made him disproportion his vast ends to his unsteady
means, by the proud fallacy, that where man failed, God would interpose.
Cola di Rienzi was no faultless hero of romance. In him lay, in
conflicting prodigality, the richest and most opposite elements of
character; strong sense, visionary superstition, an eloquence and
energy that mastered all he approached, a blind enthusiasm that mastered
him