The plot commencing lightly with the gay descriptions of idle life, its baths and its banquets, deepens gradually towards the awful magnificence of the catastrophe. All our passions are alternately “rocked as on a music scale” by the scene in the gladiatorial arena,—the inhuman delight of the spectators,—the first outburst of the irruption from the Mount of Fire,—the phenomena of the general destruction,—to the still unnoticed disappearance of Nydia, under the smile of awaking Dawn.
Ernest Maltravers.
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Rienzi.
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The early middle age of Italy rises before us; rude, yet struggling into light, and seeking escape into civilization by return to the classic past; the grand soul of the “Last Tribune” comes to recall again, for a momentary interval, the majesty of antique Rome, startling, as with the ghost of the classic giantess, the barbarian courts of the victor North. Rienzi himself is the master-spirit of the whole.
Alice; or, the Mysteries.
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The typical intentions are with admirable art kept so far subordinate to the story, that we always feel ourselves in the company of living agents; and it is only when our interest in the events of the tale and the destinies of its leading characters is fully satisfied, that we pause to look back at the secret philosophy that pervades the narrative, and become sensible of the wisdom we have acquired in the pleasure we have received.