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ONCE A WEEK.
[Dec. 14, 1861.
for which they seem to have been preparing from the beginning. Their followers wonder at this: and probably they themselves do: but there is nothing wonderful in it. They have been great, and even supreme, in one function: and that is a reason why they should not, rather than that they should, be supreme, or even great, in an opposite kind of function. Revolutionary heroes and sages have never been agitators; and agitators are about the last men likely to make effective revolutionary rulers. But the followers of a Tribune have formed their expectations on his opinions, his aims, and his promises; and when they see him struck helpless in the very moment of his grasping power, and turning irresolute as soon as he comes in full view of his object, they are first amazed, and then indignant. Hence the repute of political agitators as mere disturbers of society, and of their followers as a type of ingratitude.
I might go on suggesting other constant features of the order which never dies out. Every century has exhibited a political agitator in one country or another; and all are alike in these features, however they may otherwise vary, and whenever and wherever they may have lived.
Can Rienzi—the Prince of Demagogues—be classed among those whom men call ignorant? He was erudite: he was the friend of Petrarch: he had so studied the sculptures, and deciphered the inscriptions in Rome that he preached sermons from stones to the people: but a man who could do this might imagine the most absurd of politics for the men of his own day. Rienzi, however, had taken to heart the history of Rome in her greatest days; and he insisted that what had been possible once was practicable henceforth: and he succeeded, as far as he did succeed, by promising good laws, and by giving them when he had the power. Yet he failed when, according to his own calculations, he should have found himself supreme. He did not know the circumstances which rendered it impossible to reproduce a former social state. He did not know enough of the human mind, nor of human history, to be aware that sudden and arbitrary social changes are incompatible with the “justice and peace” which he dreamed of and promised: and he had not duly considered what he was to do with the class opposed to justice and peace, when once he had humbled them. Therefore was the career of Eienzi the melancholy spectacle which it is and will always be. We see him, first, happy at the school to which he was sent by his father the innkeeper and his mother the laundress. Then he grew up absorbed in his studies, dreaming of liberty, and pondering its forces and graces, and as glad at last, when his mind was full, to speak as others were to hear, of the glories of old Rome, and the aspirations of her statesmen and orators. He became famous; and every word of his splendid eloquence kindled fire among a people cruelly oppressed and insulted by an intolerable aristocracy. It might almost be set down among the constant features of the agitator’s case that he finds a set of insufferable “barons” to oppose. The Roman barons of Rienzi’s day were first his abhorrence; then his prey; then his embarrassment; and finally his destruction. We see him. in the depths of the summer night, in May, 1347, administering an oath of fidelity to a hundred followers on Mount Aventine, and instructing them to bring the people to him the next evening, to start the conflict with the nobles who had desolated their homes and ruined their fortunes. Then followed the trumpet blast in the morning, with the proclamation, and the toll of the great bell of the Capitol in the evening; and the quaking of the nobles, and the enthusiasm of the people, and Rienzi’s triumph. He had strength to make good many of his promises, and to call himself only Tribune when the people would have made him Emperor; but he had his hour of paralysis, according to the usual course. He could not make war, nor even order it, nor bear a brave man’s share in it. He could not see that his real dignity lay in preserving the manners and appearance of his former life; and he exceeded the hated nobles in extravagance of dress, and in luxury which soon passed into intemperance. The sun and stars in a great banner, the dove and olive branch were carried over his head; gold and silver were displayed and lavished with vulgar vanity; and the people saw in their own Tribune a far grosser example of effeminacy, self-seeking, cruelty to offenders, and overbearing insolence than in the barons whom he had spent his life in denouncing. Though he had at first done great things for them, these offences could no more be borne from him than from others; and in six months from that night-meeting on Mount Aventine, Rienzi was flying in disguise from Rome. He had caused himself to be crowned with seven crowns, and had declared the four quarters of the world to be his, as he waved his sword to the four points of the compass: and already he was an exile, excommunicated by the people as much as by the Pope. His friend Petrarch was disgusted with him; and he seemed to have lost everything he had lived for. In seven years he returned to meet his fate. As soon as he could make himself heard, he won all hearts—Petrarch’s among the rest. He was permitted by the Pope to return to Rome, under certain engagements which must have been a fatal clog upon his administration, if all had gone well. But he believed he had once again everything in his own hand. His reception was all he could desire: but it turned his head as before; and the wrath of the disappointed citizens was extreme. They besieged him in the Capitol, and his mood changed from a brief heroism to utter depression. It must have been a strange spectacle when the late ruler of Rome and the world (as Rome believed) stood half naked and dumb in the face of the multitude, on the platform from which he had pronounced his judgments,—unable to use, in the silence of the curious and pitying crowd, that splendid faculty of speech by which he had led them on to revolution. For a whole hour they waited in vain for a sound from his lips. Then, one at least would wait no longer. He was the representative of the many who were indignant at having been put off with theatrical shows when they had been promised a thorough social reform; and at witnessing a personal vanity beyond example in a leader whom they had worshipped
