him to greatness.  He returns, the Pope’s Legate refuses him arms—­the People refuse him money.  He re-establishes law and order, expels the tyrants, renounces his former faults (this, the second period of his power, has been represented by Gibbon and others as that of his principal faults, and he is evidently at this time no favourite with his contemporaneous biographer; but looking to what he did, we find amazing dexterity, prudence, and energy in the most difficult crisis, and none of his earlier faults.  It is true, that he does not shew the same brilliant extravagance which, I suspect, dazzled his contemporaries, more than his sounder qualities; but we find that in a few weeks he had conquered all his powerful enemies—­that his eloquence was as great as ever—­his promptitude greater—­his diligence indefatigable—­his foresight unslumbering.  “He alone,” says the biographer, “carried on the affairs of Rome, but his officials were slothful and cold.”  This too, tortured by a painful disease—­already—­though yet young—­broken and infirm.  The only charges against him, as Senator, were the deaths of Montreal and Pandulfo di Guido, the imposition of the gabelle, and the renunciation of his former habits of rigid abstinence, for indulgence in wine and feasting.  Of the first charges, the reader has already been enabled to form a judgment.  To the last, alas! the reader must extend indulgence, and for it he may find excuse.  We must compassionate even more than condemn the man to whom excitement has become nature, and who resorts to the physical stimulus or the momentary Lethe, 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.