greater man in some points of character—­in his religious enthusiasm; his rigid justice, often forced by circumstance into severity, but never wantonly cruel or blood-thirsty; in his singular pride of country; and his mysterious command over the minds of others.  But he resembled the giant Englishman far more in circumstance than original nature, and that circumstance assimilated their characters at the close of their several careers.  Like Cromwell, beset by secret or open foes, the assassin’s dagger ever gleamed before his eyes; and his stout heart, unawed by real, trembled at imagined, terrors.  The countenance changing suddenly from red to white—­the bloodshot, restless eye, belying the composed majesty of mien—­the muttering lips—­the broken slumber—­the secret corselet; these to both were the rewards of Power!

The elasticity of youth had left the Tribune!  His frame, which had endured so many shocks, had contracted a painful disease in the dungeon at Avignon ("Dicea che ne la prigione era stato ascarmato.”  “Vita di Cola di Rienzi”, lib. ii. cap. 18.)—­his high soul still supported him, but the nerves gave way.  Tears came readily into his eyes, and often, like Cromwell, he was thought to weep from hypocrisy, when in truth it was the hysteric of over-wrought and irritable emotion.  In all his former life singularly temperate, ("Solea prima esser sobrio, temperato, astinente, or a e diventato distemperatissimo bevitore,” &c.—­Ibid.) he now fled from his goading thoughts to the beguiling excitement of wine.  He drank deep, though its effects were never visible upon him except in a freer and wilder mood, and the indulgence of that racy humour, half-mirthful, half-bitter, for which his younger day had been distinguished.  Now the mirth had more loudness, but the bitterness more gall.

Such were the characteristics of Rienzi at his return to power—­made more apparent with every day.  Nina he still loved with the same tenderness, and, if possible, she adored him more than ever:  but, the zest and freshness of triumphant ambition gone, somehow or other, their intercourse together had not its old charm.  Formerly they talked constantly of the future—­of the bright days in store for them.  Now, with a sharp and uneasy pang, Rienzi turned from all thought of that “gay tomorrow.”  There was no “gay tomorrow” for him!  Dark and thorny as was the present hour, all beyond seemed yet less cheering and more ominous.  Still he had some moments, brief but brilliant, when, forgetting the iron race amongst whom he was thrown, he plunged into scholastic reveries of the worshipped Past, and half-fancied that he was of a People worthy of his genius and his devotion.  Like most men who have been preserved through great dangers, he continued with increasing fondness to nourish a credulous belief in the grandeur of his own destiny.  He could not imagine that he had been so delivered, and for no end!  He was the Elected, and therefore the Instrument, of Heaven.  And thus, that Bible which in his loneliness, his wanderings, and his prison, had been his solace and support, was more than ever needed in his greatness.