The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-03-12

very important period crudely examined. Gibbons violent almost hysteric, hatred of historical personages who professed the Christian religion, as well as hls innate inability to comprehend such man as the last of the tribunes or his aims and aspirations, saused him to slur over with gibes and detractions a man whose elements of greatness were over whelmed in the impossiblity of restoring a degenerate race and a dead civilization single-handed. That Rienzi's own fault hastened his downfall Is undoubted, as it is also patent that power intoxicated him and caused him in his maturer years to commit vagaries which he would not have thought of in the days when he was first building up his power. Rienzi and his story are worthy of a greater mind and more potent hand than Bulwer-Lyt- ton. But Bulwer- Lytton has given us the best we have concerning him and it-and so with this must we at present re- main contented.
 IT was summer evening in the early
 part of the 14th century. Two youths A were walking along the banks of the Tiher not far from that part of it's wind ing course which washes the foot of Mount Aventine One was a tall and stalwart young man but little past his 20th year., but whose features and man. ners displayed something In them which seemed to make him an equal of men much his senior, and whose eye had the glance of one born to command. The other was a mere boy with nothing re- narkable about him unless 1t might be the expression of gentle sweetness almost lw-
 There were Cola di Rienzi and his young brother. They were the sons of an innkeeper and of the rank of the pleb- fans though through their mother they might law claim to royal blood. their ma ternal grandfather having been natural son of the Tentonic Emperor Henry VII. Cola, In spite of his being plebian, had already acquired such a reputation for wit and scholarship that he had been taken under the patronage of the aged chief of the great house of Colonna, and was not infrequently invited to the table of that great man who, however unable to perceive the really great qualities regarding him more for his merry stories at table than anything else and looked upon him rather as a scholarly buffoon.
 On the evening on which our story opens Cola, after while, said to his brother: Now our talk has beguiled me; Father Umberto has promised me a rare manuscript which, the good friar confesses, has puzzled the whole convent I seek his cell. Tarry you here while I shall soon return" While Cola was gone the younger boy busted himself with gathered a garland of flowers, an abundance of which grew wild over the broken ruins of empire which strewed the spot now desolate and once alive with the glory and the pomp of Rome. Scarcely had he completed his task when down the road, in one direction came charging a troop of mounted men crying "A Colonna Colonna! and from the opposite direction another band came charging also, to the battle cry of "Orsinl, Orsini, beware the hug of the bear,' Caught between the contending factions as they met in deadly conflict, hacking and staying and shouting their war cries. young Rienzi fell dead, pierced
 
 who has mistaken him for page of the Orsini.
 In those days Rome was at her lowest stage of degradation. The former mis- tress of the world, shrunk in dimensions to comparatively small city. sat in the midst of vast stretches of ruins which had once been called by her name, her marts deserted, the marbles of her im- perial palaces and storied temples quar- ried to make novels for an abject and degraded race, the football of a few naughty noble families whose great for ess-palaces shot their towers in grim menace above the desolation and decay. Chiefest of these noble families were the Colonna and the Orsini; and their per- petual feuds, fought out with their re- tainers and their hired northern mer- cenaries. kept the city in spasmodic war and tumut while their oppression kept the lives of the people in constant jeop- ardy and their rapacity steeped the plebians in the deepest poverty Rienzi being a little above the masses in birth, and also being of some substance. might have allied himself with one of these powerful barons and become a follower in his train.
 But his studies had filled his mind with the idea of the glory that was Rome's" and his heart with pain at the contrast between the past and the present. AL ready his imagination had conjured rp dreams of a Rome where equal justice should be meted out to noble and ple- bian alike. where prosperity and peace should once again inhabit the homes and the market places, and to be a Roman dered was tho state of Rome in the days when the young Rienzi dreamed that the popes themselves could not live in the Eternal City without becoming the virtual prisoners of some predatory bar on, and the papal court had become re- moved to the safer and more civilized city of Avignon in Provence.
 This was the state of things in Rome when Cola, returning from the convent found the Colonna masters of the feis and saw the body of his brother lying dead in the roadway At once he in- Quired who had done this thing, and en- ergetically demanded justice from old Stephen Colonna, the head of the great house But justice he got not-it was only an accident, said the naughty old man--and only the death of a pebiani
 From that hour Cola separated him. self from the Colonnas and while sedu- iously pursuing his studies dreamed great 1..z, ~f