Enough of bloodshed! Their enthusiasm grew wilder when, in an access of
princely graciousness, he repaired the lamentable excess of zeal by
pinning the Order of the Golden Vine to the offending officer's breast;
it rose to a veritable frenzy as soon as they learned that, by Letters
Patent, the entire defunct squadron had been posthumously ennobled. And
this is only one of many occasions on which this ruler, by his intimate
knowledge of human nature and the arts of government, was enabled to
wrest good from evil, and thereby consolidate his throne. . . .
It is passing strange, on the face of it, that this vivid personality,
one of the most arresting figures in the history of the country, should
be so briefly dealt with in the pages of Monsignor Perrelli. Doubly
strange, and a serious disappointment to the reader, in view of the
fact that the two men were contemporaries, and that the learned writer
must have enjoyed exceptional facilities for obtaining first-hand
knowledge of his subject. Almost inexplicable indeed, when one
remembers those maxims which he himself, in the Introduction to his
ANTIQUITIES, lays down for the writing of history; when one calls to
mind his own gleams of exotic scholarship, those luminous asides and
fruitful digressions, those statesmanlike comments on things in general
which make his work not so much a compendium of local lore as a mirror
of the polite learning of his age.
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