sake me, ye for whose
cause alone man dares to hurl against me the thunders of his God? Is it
not for you that I am declared heretic and rebel! What are my imputed
crimes? That I have made Rome and asserted Italy to be free; that I
have subdued the proud Magnates, who were the scourge both of Pope and
People. And you--you upbraid me with what I have dared and done for you!
Men, with you I would have fought, for you I would have perished. You
forsake yourselves in forsaking me, and since I no longer rule over
brave men, I resign my power to the tyrant you prefer. Seven months
I have ruled over you, prosperous in commerce, stainless in
justice--victorious in the field:--I have shown you what Rome could be;
and, since I abdicate the government ye gave me, when I am gone, strike
for your own freedom! It matters nothing who is the chief of a brave
and great people. Prove that Rome hath many a Rienzi, but of brighter
fortunes."

"I would he had not sought to tax us," said Cecco del Vecchio, who
was the very personification of the vulgar feeling: "and that he had
beheaded the Barons!"

"Ay!" cried the ex-gravedigger; "but that blessed porphyry vase!"

"And why should we get our throats cut," said Luigi, the butcher, "like
my two brothers?--Heaven rest them!"

On the face of the general multitude there was a common expression of
irresolution and shame, many wept and groaned, none (save the aforesaid
grumblers) accused; none upbraided, but none seemed disposed to arm. It
was one of those listless panics, those strange fits of indifference and
lethargy which often seize upon a people who make liberty a matter of
impulse and caprice, to whom it has become a catchword, who have not
long enjoyed all its rational, and sound, and practical, and blessed
results; who have been affrayed by the storms that herald its dawn;--a
people such as is common to the south: such as even the north has known;
such as, had Cromwell lived a year longer, even England might have seen;
and, indeed, in some measure, such a reaction from popular enthusiasm
to popular indifference England did see, when her children madly
surrendered the fruits of a bloody war, without reserve, without
foresight, to the lewd pensioner of Louis, and the royal murderer of
Sydney. To such prostration of soul, such blindness of intellect, even
the noblest people will be subjected, when liberty, which should be the
growth of ages, spreading its roots through the strata of a th