As Rienzi is the last, so it is the best novel of Bulwer. In the Preface we are informed that the work was commenced two years ago at Rome, but abandoned upon the author's removing to Naples, for the "Last days of Pompeii"--a subject requiring, more than Rienzi, the advantage of a personal residence within reach of the scenes described. The idea of the present work, however, was never dismissed from the writer's mind, and soon after the publication of "Pompeii" he resumed his original undertaking. We are told that having had occasion to look into the original authorities whence are derived all the accounts of modern historians touching Rienzi, Mr. B. was induced to believe that no just picture of the Life or Times of that most remarkable man was at present in the hands of the people. Under this impression the novelist had at first meditated a work of History rather than of Fiction. We doubt, however, whether the spirit of the author's intention is not better fulfilled as it is. He has adhered with scrupulous fidelity to all the main events in the _public_ life of his hero; and by means of the relief afforded through the personages of pure romance which form the filling in of the picture, he has been enabled more fully to develop the _private_ character of the noble Roman. The reader may indeed be startled at the vast difference between the Rienzi of Mr. Bulwer, and the Rienzi of Sismondi, of Gibbon, and of Miss Mitford. But by neither of the two latter are we disposed to swear--and of Sismondi's impartiality we can at no moment be certain. Mr. B., moreover, very justly observes that as, in the work before us, all the _acts_ are given from which is derived his interpretation of the principal agent, the public, having sufficient data for its own judgment, may fashion an opinion for itself. Generally, the true chronology of Rienzi's life is preserved. In regard to the story--or that chain of fictitious incident usually binding up together the constituent parts of a Romance--there is very little of it in the book. This follows necessarily from the character of the composition--which is essentially Epic rather than Dramatic. The author's apology seems to us therefore supererogative when he says that a work which takes for its subject the crimes and errors of a nation and which ventures to seek the actual and the real in the highest stage of action or passion can rarely adopt with advantage the melo-dramatic effects produced by a vulgar mystery. In his pictures of the Roman populace, and in those of the Roman nobles of the fourteenth century--pictures full at all times of an enthralling interest--Mr. B. professes to have followed literally the descriptions left to us.