[Footnote 1:  The Countess Albrizzi—­see her Sketch of his Character.]

Still more singular, however, than this contradiction between the public and private man,—­a contradiction not unfrequent, and, in some cases, more apparent than real, as depending upon the relative position of the observer,—­were those contrarieties and changes not less startling, which his character so often exhibited, as compared with itself.  He who, at one moment, was seen intrenched in the most absolute self-will, would, at the very next, be found all that was docile and amenable.  To-day, storming the world in its strong-holds, as a misanthrope and satirist—­to-morrow, learning, with implicit obedience, to fold a shawl, as a Cavaliere—­the same man who had so obstinately refused to surrender, either to friendly remonstrance or public outcry, a single line of Don Juan, at the mere request of a gentle Donna agreed to cease it altogether; nor would venture to resume this task (though the chief darling of his muse) till, with some difficulty, he had obtained leave from the same ascendant quarter.  Who, indeed, is there that, without some previous clue to his transformations, could have been at all prepared to recognise the coarse libertine of Venice in that romantic and passionate lover who, but a few months after, stood weeping before the fountain in the garden at Bologna? or, who could have expected to find in the close calculator of sequins and baiocchi, that generous champion of Liberty whose whole fortune, whose very life itself were considered by him but as trifling sacrifices for the advancement, but by a day, of her cause?

And here naturally our attention is drawn to the consideration of another feature of his character, connected more intimately with the bright epoch of his life now before us.  Notwithstanding his strongly marked prejudices in favour of rank and high birth, we have seen with what ardour,—­not only in fancy and theory, bet practically, as in the case of the Italian Carbonari,—­he embarked his sympathies unreservedly on the current of every popular movement towards freedom.  Though of the sincerity of this zeal for liberty the seal set upon it so solemnly by his death leaves us no room to doubt, a question may fairly arise whether that general love of excitement, let it flow from whatever source it might, by which, more or less, every pursuit of his whole life was actuated, was not predominant among the impulses that governed him in this; and, again, whether it is not probable that, like Alfieri and other aristocratic lovers of freedom, he would not ultimately have shrunk from the result of his own equalising doctrines; and, though zealous enough in lowering those above his own level, rather recoil from the task of raising up those who were below it.