orsook him through the whole of his
career.

[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 n