I have said that the moral of the Tribune’s life, and of this fiction, is not the stale and unprofitable moral that warns the ambition of an individual:—­More vast, more solemn, and more useful, it addresses itself to nations.  If I judge not erringly, it proclaims that, to be great and free, a People must trust not to individuals but themselves—­that there is no sudden leap from servitude to liberty—­that it is to institutions, not to men, for they must look for reforms that last beyond the hour—­that their own passions are the real despots they should subdue, their own reason the true regenerator of abuses.  With a calm and a noble people, the individual ambition of a citizen can never effect evil:—­to be impatient of chains, is not to be worthy of freedom—­to murder a magistrate is not to ameliorate the laws. (Rienzi was murdered because the Romans had been in the habit of murdering whenever they were displeased.  They had, very shortly before, stoned one magistrate, and torn to pieces another.  By the same causes and the same career a People may be made to resemble the bravo whose hand wanders to his knife at the smallest affront, and if today he poniards the enemy who assaults him, tomorrow he strikes the friend who would restrain.) The People write their own condemnation whenever they use characters of blood; and theirs alone the madness and the crime, if they crown a tyrant or butcher a victim.

Appendix II.  A Word Upon the Work by Pere du Cerceau and Pere Brumoy,

Entitled “Conjuration de Nicolas Gabrini, Dit de Rienzi, Tyran de Rome.”

Shortly after the Romance of “Rienzi” first appeared, a translation of the biography compiled by Cerceau and Brumoy was published by Mr. Whittaker.  The translator, in a short and courteous advertisement, observes, “That it has always been considered as a work of authority; and even Gibbon appears to have relied on it without further research:  (Here, however, he does injustice to Gibbon.)...that, “as a record of facts, therefore, the work will, it is presumed, be acceptable to the public.”  The translator has fulfilled his duty with accuracy, elegance, and spirit,—­and he must forgive me, if, in justice to History and Rienzi, I point out a very few from amongst a great many reasons, why the joint labour of the two worthy Jesuits cannot be considered either a work of authority, or a record of facts.  The translator observes in his preface, “that the general outline (of Du Cerceau’s work) was probably furnished by an Italian life written by a contemporary of Rienzi.”  The fact, however, is, that Du Cerceau’s book is little more than a wretched paraphrase of that very Italian life mentioned by the translator,—­full of blunders, from ignorance of the peculiar and antiquated dialect in which the original is written, and of assumptions by the Jesuit himself, which rest upon no authority whatever.  I will first shew, in support of this assertion, what the Italians themselves think of the work of Fathers Brumoy and Du Cerceau.  The Signor Zefirino Re, who had proved himself singularly and minutely acquainted with the history of that time, and whose notes to the “Life of Rienzi” are characterized by acknowledged acuteness and research, thus describes the manner in which the two Jesuits compounded this valuable “record of facts.”