died of grief the following day.) in Rome, was admiration for his heroism, and compassion for his end.  The fate of Pandulfo di Guido, which followed some days afterwards, excited a yet deeper, though more quiet, sentiment, against the Senator.  “He was once Rienzi’s friend!” said one man; “He was an honest, upright citizen!” muttered another; “He was an advocate of the people!” growled Cecco del Vecchio.  But the Senator had wound himself up to a resolve to be inflexibly just, and to regard every peril to Rome as became a Roman.  Rienzi remembered that he had never confided but he had been betrayed; he had never forgiven but to sharpen enmity.  He was amidst a ferocious people, uncertain friends, wily enemies; and misplaced mercy would be but a premium to conspiracy.  Yet the struggle he underwent was visible in the hysterical emotions he betrayed.  He now wept bitterly, now laughed wildly.  “Can I never again have the luxury to forgive?” said he.  The coarse spectators of that passion deemed it,—­some imbecility, some hypocrisy.  But the execution produced the momentary effect intended.  All sedition ceased, terror crept throughout the city, order and peace rose to the surface; but beneath, in the strong expression of a contemporaneous writer, “Lo mormorito quetamente suonava.” ("The murmur quietly sounded.”)

On examining dispassionately the conduct of Rienzi at this awful period of his life, it is scarcely possible to condemn it of a single error in point of policy.  Cured of his faults, he exhibited no unnecessary ostentation—­he indulged in no exhibitions of intoxicated pride—­that gorgeous imagination rather than vanity, which had led the Tribune into spectacle and pomp, was now lulled to rest, by the sober memory of grave vicissitudes, and the stern calmness of a maturer intellect.  Frugal, provident, watchful, self-collected, ‘never was seen,’ observes no partial witness, ‘so extraordinary a man.’ ("Vita di Cola di Rienzi”, lib. ii. c. 23.) ’In him was concentrated every thought for every want of Rome.  Indefatigably occupied, he inspected, ordained, regulated all things; in the city, in the army, for peace, or for war.  But he was feebly supported, and those he employed were lukewarm and lethargic.’  Still his arms prospered.  Place after place, fortress after fortress, yielded to the Lieutenant of the Senator:  and the cession of Palestrina itself was hourly expected.  His art and address were always strikingly exhibited in difficult situations, and the reader cannot fail to have noticed how conspicuously they were displayed in delivering himself from the iron tutelage of his foreign mercenaries.  Montreal executed, his brothers imprisoned, (though their lives were spared,) a fear that induced respect was stricken into the breasts of those bandit soldiers.  Removed from Rome, and, under Annibaldi, engaged against the Barons, constant action and constant success, withheld those necessary fiends from falling on their Master; while Rienzi, willing to yield to the natural antipathy of the Romans, thus kept the Northmen from all contact with the city; and as he boasted, was the only chief in Italy who reigned in his palace guarded only by his citizens.