rom
the united minds of millions: but it is the common wish acting on no
common man. He does not long to rule, that he may sway other wills, as
it were, by the physical exertion of his own: he would lead us captive
by the superior grandeur of his qualities, once fairly manifested; and
he aims at dominion, chiefly as it will enable him to manifest these.
'It is not the arena that he values, but what lies in that arena:' the
sovereignty is enviable, not for its adventitious splendour, not
because it is the object of coarse and universal wonder; but as it
offers, in the collected force of a nation, something which the
loftiest mortal may find scope for all his powers in guiding. "Spread
out the thunder," Fiesco exclaims, "into its single tones, and it
becomes a lullaby for children: pour it forth together in _one_ quick
peal, and the royal sound shall move the heavens." His affections are
not less vehement than his other passions: his heart can be melted
into powerlessness and tenderness by the mild persuasions of his
Leonora; the idea of exalting this amiable being mingles largely with
the other motives to his enterprise. He is, in fact, a great, and
might have been a virtuous man; and though in the pursuit of grandeur
he swerves from absolute rectitude, we still respect his splendid
qualities, and admit the force of the allurements which have led him
astray. It is but faintly that we condemn his sentiments, when, after
a night spent in struggles between a rigid and a more accommodating
patriotism, he looks out of his chamber, as the sun is rising in its
calm beauty, and gilding the waves and mountains, and all the
innumerable palaces and domes and spires of Genoa, and exclaims with
rapture: "This majestic city--mine! To flame over it like the kingly
Day; to brood over it with a monarch's power; all these sleepless
longings, all these never satiated wishes to be drowned in that
unfathomable ocean!" We admire Fiesco, we disapprove of him, and
sympathise with him: he is crushed in the ponderous machinery which
himself put in motion and thought to control: we lament his fate, but
confess that it was not undeserved. He is a fit 'offering of
individual free-will to the force of social conventions.'

Fiesco is not the only striking character in the play which bears his
name. The narrow fanatical republican virtue of Verrina, the mild and
venerable wisdom of the old Doria, the unbridled profligacy of his
Nephew, even the cold,