the filthy place to which he had fallen. And opposite to
the image of the Pretender must constantly have arisen the image of
Alfieri--opposite to the image of the man, once heroic and charming and
brilliant, who had sold his heroism and his charm, his mind and his
manhood, for the bestial pleasure of drink--who had rewarded the
devotion and self-sacrifice and noble enthusiasm of his followers
by the sight, worse than the scaffold on Tower Hill, of their idol
turning into a half-maniac, besotted brute; opposite to this image of
degradation must have arisen the image of the man who had wrestled with
the baser passions of his nature, who had broken through the base habits
of his youth, who had fashioned himself into a noble moral shape as the
marble is fashioned by the hand of the sculptor; who was struggling
still, not merely with the difficulties of his art, but with whatever he
thought mean and slothful in himself.

Some eighteen months after their first acquaintance, Alfieri announced
to the wife of Charles Edward that he had just happily settled a most
important piece of business, the success of which was one of the most
fortunate things of his life. He had made a gift of all his estates to
his sister, reserving for himself only a very moderate yearly income; he
had reduced himself from comparative wealth to comparative poverty; he
had cut himself off from ever making a suitable marriage; he had made
himself a pensioner of his sister's husband: but at this price he had
bought independence--he was no longer the subject of the King of
Sardinia, nor of any sovereign or State in the world.

The passion for political liberty, the abhorrence of any kind of
despotism, however glorious or however paternal, had grown in Alfieri
with every journey he had made through France, Spain, Germany,
Russia--with every sojourn in England; it had grown with every page of
Livy and Tacitus, with every line of Dante and Petrarch which he had
read; it had grown with every word that he himself had written. He had
determined to be the poet who should make men ashamed of being slaves
and ashamed of being tyrants. But he was himself the subject of the
little military despotism of Piedmont, whose nobles required, every
time they wished to travel or live abroad, to beg civilly for leave of
absence, which was usually most uncivilly granted; and one of whose laws
threatened any person who should print books in foreign countries, and
without the perm