To those hopeful spirits who looked for the near approach of a happier era, Alfieri was the inspired spokesman of reform, the heaven-sent prophet who was to lead his country out of bondage.  The eyes of the Italian reformers were fixed with passionate eagerness on the course of events in England and France.  The conclusion of peace between England and America, recently celebrated in Alfieri’s fifth Ode, seemed to the most sceptical convincing proof that the rights of man were destined to a speedy triumph throughout the civilised world.  It was not of a united Italy that these enthusiasts dreamed.  They were not so much patriots as philanthropists; for the teachings of Rousseau and his school, while intensifying the love of man for man, had proportionately weakened the sense of patriotism, of the interets du clocher.  The new man prided himself on being a citizen of the world, on sympathising as warmly with the poetic savage of Peru as with his own prosaic and narrow-minded neighbours.  Indeed, the prevalent belief that the savage’s mode of life was much nearer the truth than that of civilised Europeans, made it appear superfluous to enter into the grievances and difficulties of what was but a passing phase of human development.  To cast off clothes and codes, and live in a peaceful socialism “under the amiable reign of Truth and Nature,” seemed on the whole much easier than to undertake the systematic reform of existing abuses.

To such dreamers—­whose ideas were those of the majority of intelligent men in France and Italy—­Alfieri’s high-sounding tirades embodied the noblest of political creeds; and even the soberer judgment of statesmen and men of affairs was captivated by the grandeur of his verse and the heroic audacity of his theme.  For the first time in centuries the Italian Muse spoke with the voice of a man; and every man’s heart in Italy sprang up at the call.

In the midst of these triumphs, fate in the shape of Cardinal York had momentarily separated Alfieri from his mistress, despatching the too-tender Countess to a discreet retreat in Alsace, and signifying to her turbulent adorer that he was not to follow her.  Distracted by this prohibition, Alfieri had resumed the nomadic habits of his youth, now wandering from one Italian city to another, now pushing as far as Paris, which he hated but was always revisiting, now dashing across the Channel to buy thoroughbreds in England—­for his passion for horses was unabated.  He was lately returned from such an expedition, having led his cavalcade across the Alps in person, with a boyish delight in the astonishment which this fantastic exploit excited.