Edward, the Countess of Albany, in close friendship with whom he lived after her husband’s death.  The society of this lady gave him perfect happiness; but it was founded on her lofty beauty, the pathos of her situation, and her intellectual qualities.  Melpomene presided at this union, while Thalia blessed the nuptials of Goldoni.  How characteristic also were the adventures which these two pairs of lovers encountered!  Goldoni once carried his wife upon his back across two rivers in their flight from the Spanish to the Austrian camp at Rimini, laughing and groaning, and perceiving the humour of his situation all the time.  Alfieri, on an occasion of even greater difficulty, was stopped with his illustrious friend at the gates of Paris in 1792.  They were flying in post-chaises, with their servants and their baggage, from the devoted city, when a troop of sansculottes rushed on them, surged around the carriage, called them aristocrats, and tried to drag them off to prison.  Alfieri, with his tall gaunt figure, pallid face, and red voluminous hair, stormed, raged, and raised his deep bass voice above the tumult.  For half an hour he fought with them, then made his coachmen gallop through the gates, and scarcely halted till they got to Gravelines.  By this prompt movement they escaped arrest and death at Paris.  These two scenes would make agreeable companion pictures:  Goldoni staggering beneath his wife across the muddy bed of an Italian stream—­the smiling writer of agreeable plays, with his half-tearful helpmate ludicrous in her disasters; Alfieri mad with rage among Parisian Maenads, his princess quaking in her carriage, the air hoarse with cries, and death and safety trembling in the balance.  It is no wonder that the one man wrote ‘La Donna di Garbo’ and the ‘Cortese Veneziano,’ while the other was inditing essays on Tyranny and dramas of ‘Antigone,’ ‘Timoleon,’ and ‘Brutus.’

The difference between the men is seen no less remarkably in regard to courage.  Alfieri was a reckless rider, and astonished even English huntsmen by his desperate leaps.  In one of them he fell and broke his collar-bone, but not the less he held his tryst with a fair lady, climbed her park gates, and fought a duel with her husband.  Goldoni was a pantaloon for cowardice.  In the room of an inn at Desenzano which he occupied together with a female fellow-traveller, an attempt was made to rob them by a thief at night.  All Goldoni was able to do consisted in crying out for help, and the lady called him ‘M. l’Abbe’ ever after for his want of pluck.  Goldoni must have been by far the more agreeable of the two.  In all his changes from town to town of Italy he found amusement and brought gaiety.  The sights, the theatres, the society aroused his curiosity.  He trembled with excitement at the performance of his pieces, made friends with the actors, taught them, and wrote parts to suit their qualities.  At Pisa he attended as a stranger the meeting of the Arcadian