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Untitled Article
his side ; and at length , taking advantage of the absence of Stephen ColoBna and the principal nobles , he summoned the whole people to a great meeting . The result was , his complete success . He proclaimed a new constitution , and a set of wise and beneficial laws . The people would h&ve made him king ,
but h& chose the ancient title of Tribune . ITie nobles , on their hasty return , found the gates shut arid the walls manned , and were finally obliged to yield to the " Good State . " Their castles were dismantled , their mercenaries banished ; the robbers disappeared ; trade , ease , wealth , were restored ; the laws were administered with the most perfect impartiality ; all the abuses of the state were reformed ; all Italy acknowledged the Tribune and his government ; foreign states respected him ; Petrarch celebrated him . He maintained an extraordinary degree of pomp and parade , and is said to hav e incensed the nobles by nis haughtiness and pride . He discovered a conspiracy among them to assassinate him , and pardoned the conspirator ^ after sentence of death had been pronounced on
them . Still further incensed by the humiliation of being pardoned ^ they next appeared in open insurrection , but he conquered them in battle . One battle , however , was quite
enaugh ihr the Roman people ; they would neither fight again , nor pay taxes to support mercenary troops . At the most critical moment the church deserted him , sentence of excommunication was pronounced against him , and the nobles succeeded in regaining their power . After seven months only of a most benencent sway , Rienzi was obliged to fly from the city , and to abandon the people to worse than their old oppressions , if Worse could be . He wandered about the worla for seven years , part of the time being spent in prison at Avignon ; till
at length , the Pope , unable to quell the turbulence and anarch y of Rome , sent him back to the people , who had never ceased to regret him , with the title of Senator . He ruled again , as wisely and successfully as before , but only for four months . On again attempting to lay a tax on the people , they rose against him , and he was massacred in the act of haranguing them from the stairs of the capitol .
A few extracts will give some idea of the skilful manner in which Mr . Bulwer has worked upon the materials of which so very slight a sketch has here been attempted . The following " scene introduces Rienzi to the reader : — ** It was on a summer evening that two youths might be seen walking beside the banks of the Tiber , not far from tliut jmrt of its winding £ btirse whifeh sweeps by the base of Mount " Aventine . The path they had ' selected Was remote and tranquil . It was onl y nt a distance that Wefe « eetff the scattered and squalid houses that bordered the
river s from ! amidst whith arose , dark and frequent , "the hi «* h roof and enormous towers which marked the fortified mansion of-some Koinan
Untitled Article
48 JRienzu
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1836, page 48, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2653/page/48/
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