"The

-considering the lapse of time-the | Peace of Utrecht, remarks: names of the parties. The peer was Count and Countess of Albany lived Lord Ligonier, and his frail partner together during several years at Flor Penelope, daughter of George Lord ence, a harsh husband and a faithless Rivers. wife; until at length in 1780, weary of restraint, she eloped with her lover Alfieri." We doubt whether this allegation is borne out by facts; for her removal to the convent, under the immediate protection of the Grand Duchess, can hardly be designated an elopement; and her subsequent retirement to Rome was in accordance with the advice of her brother-in-law the cardinal, and under the sanction of the papal Nuncio. Her removal to Rome took place at the end of December, 1780; and we are told by an historian of the period, that she was treated with the greatest respect by Cardinal York, who frequently invited her to his residence at Frascati.

We know not the precise period at which Alfieri parted from his paramour, but we know that not very long after his arrival in Florence he became acquainted, through the agency of a friend, with the young and fair Countess of Albany. He states, that he had not gone many times to see her before he felt himself, as it were, unconsciously caught, and agitated by a passion of the mind to which he had heretofore been a stranger, and the more profound and lasting in proportion as it was less impetuous and fervent. "Such was the flame," he says, "which little by little got the upper hand of my every thought and feeling, and will never be extinguished in me but with my life."

It can hardly be questioned that the countess reciprocated Alfieri's passionate feelings, and allowed him to take an active part in her separation from her husband. This occurred in the month of December, 1780. It was the custom of the Pretender, on St. Andrew's Day, to indulge to the greatest excess in drinking; and in a fit of intoxication he committed a most brutal assault on his wife, beating her at night and in bed, and attempting to strangle her. Making her case known to the Grand Duke, she was advised by the Tuscan court, in concurrence with the opinion of the Pretender's own brother, Cardinal York, that she should throw off her worthless husband for ever, and retire into a convent. Alfieri assisted in her removal; and Charles Edward declared that he would give a thousand zechins to anybody who would kill the gentleman who assisted his wife on that occasion. Alfieri, in referring to the countess's removal, observes: "Suffice it to say that I saved my lady from the tyranny of an irrational and constantly drunken master, without her honor being in any way whatever compromised, nor the proprieties in the least transgressed." There are, however, some historical writers who cast considerable doubt on the purity of their intercourse from the beginning. The present Lord Stanhope, in his History of England from the

Alfieri did not immediately follow the object of his passion to Rome; he tarried for a while-perhaps to save appearances at Florence, but after a short interval he set out for Naples, passing through the Eternal City on his way. He remained but a few days in Rome, during which he contrived to have a brief interview with the countess, and of which he speaks in these terms: "I saw her a prisoner behind a grating: less vexed, however, than I had seen her at Florence, but for other reasons I did not find her less unhappy. We were completely separated, and who could say for how long we were so ?"

Alfieri's restless spirit did not allow him to remain for any length of time at Naples; he speedily found his way back to Rome, and passed most of his evenings with the countess, and with whom he was occasionally seen in public. This extreme intimacy of the two parties, "although," as Alfieri assures us, "it did not exceed the bounds of honor," created the greatest scandal in Roman society-otherwise not very fastidious in regard to such matters; and the Pretender, aroused from his fits of drunkenness to a sense of his supposed dishonor, with the assistance of his brother the cardinal, laid his grievance before the Pope, by whose order Alfieri was commanded to leave Rome within fifteen days. In pursuance of such order the poet left the city for Sienna, on the 4th

of March, 1783, declaring that he was at | helpless imbecility to the beginning of his departure "like one stupid and de- the year 1788, when, on the 29th of Janprived of sense; leaving his only love, uary, he was seized with a paralytic books, town, peace, and his very self in stroke which deprived him of one half Rome." During his separation, how- the use of his body. Two days after, ever, he carried on a steady and regular January the 31st, Lord Hervey, the correspondence with the countess, who British envoy at the Florentine court, reciprocated all his tender effusions. writes: "This morning, between the His banishment from Rome terminated hours of nine and ten, the Pretender dein the summer of 1784, when, through parted this life." His remains were inthe mediation of the King of Sweden, it terred at Frascati, and little or no regret was arranged that a formal separation was expressed by his kindred or friends, should take place between the countess as his latter years were so much darkand her besotted husband. Accord- ened by his vices and extravagances. ingly, a legal instrument was executed, After his death, his brother the cardinal signed by herself, Charles Edward, the assumed the title of Henry the Ninth : cardinal, and attested by the Pope; in he seemed distinguished for no other conformity to which she relinquished quality but that of his extreme superstiher pin-money as a return for an amica- tion and bigotry, which rendered him ble divorce à mensa et thoro, and to be generally odious and unpopular. It is at perfect liberty to select her own place recorded of Pope Pius VI., that after a of residence for the future. lengthened interview with the cardinal, he observed that he was not surprised at the eagerness of the English to rid themselves of so tiresome a race.

Nor was it long before the countess made the fullest use of her newly acquired freedom; she met Alfieri at Colmar, in Alsace, where they passed two months together. At the end of this period, and as winter was approaching, she returned to Italy, taking up her abode at Bologna; while Alfieri remained for a time at Pisa, not being allowed to enter the papal territory. In the ensuing summer they met again at Colmar, from which place, after a brief sojourn, she removed to Paris, whence in the autumn of 1786 she returned to Colmar, accompanied by Alfieri.

Shortly after his separation from his wife in July, 1784, Charles Edward, whether to annoy the countess or from a feeling of remorse, publicly acknowledged his natural daughter by Miss Walkingshaw, sending for her from the convent in which she was brought up, installing her as mistress of his family, and conferring upon her the title of Duchess of Albany. Her society, however, tended in no degree to soften or to mitigate the brutal and intemperate habits of her father; on the contrary, as he grew older he became more confirmed in his drunken propensities. "He exhibited," as Wraxall observes, "to the world a very humiliating spectacle;" and another writer remarks that "his daughter was employed in checking him when he drank too much and when he talked too much." He thus continued to linger in a state of

The daughter of Charles Edward, the Duchess of Albany, did not long survive her father; she died at Bologna in 1789, from the effects of a painful operation to which she had to submit. She appears to have been a person of pleasing looks and animated expression, with regular features, though without pretensions to striking beauty. Her miniature, once in the possession of her uncle the cardinal, has now passed into the hands of the Countess of Seafield: her face is said to resemble too much that of her father to be considered handsome.

It was not long after the death of her husband that the news reached the countess, who was then residing at Paris. Alfieri reports that she was seriously affected on receiving the intelligence. "Her grief," he says, "was neither factitious nor forced; for every untruth was alien to this upright, incomparable soul; and, notwithstanding the disparity of years, her husband would have found in her an excellent companion and a friend, if not a loving wife, had he not thrust her from him by his constantly unfriendly, rough, and unaccountable behavior. I owe to pure truth this testimony." A French writer, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, ascribes her grief to a feeling of remorse at having deserted her husband in his helplessness and bodily in

firmities. "The Duchess Charlotte,' this writer says, "entering the house of Charles Edward, the deserted child coming to the rescue of the deserted spouse, the natural child replacing the lawful wife, and exercising her pious and salutary influence over the old man-these were contrasts which could not but painfully affect the proud countess. Madame D'Albany had too elevated a soul not to feel the painfulness of her situation." And yet we can easily believe, without imputing to the countess, as this writer does, feelings of compunction and remorse, that her grief was altogether unaffected and sincere. The instinctive and better feelings of our nature, and especially those of the softer sex, will prompt us to be deeply affected at the separation from those with whom we have lived in the bonds of the closest intimacy, and with whom we have shared, even for a brief space of time, the joys and sorrows of life.

We are not, however, so much concerned in the inquiry what may have been the true state of the countess's feelings on learning the demise of her late husband, as what were her relations to Alfieri after that event. It is somewhat difficult to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion, as the opinions on the question are conflicting and widely different. While some writers of that period assert that they were privately married, others, on the contrary, maintain that no such union ever took place, and that their connection was never consecrated by the nuptial vows. Thus much is certain, that in every country whither they went, whether in Italy, France, or England, they were received in the very best society, as though they were legally joined together as husband and wife: this may be accounted for by the report of the private marriage. But if we are left to judge by the epistolary correspondence of the parties themselves, we should hardly be led to believe in the matrimonial connection. Alfieri never speaks of the countess otherwise than as "la mia donna" - my lady, and "la dolce meta di me stesso”. -the sweeter half of my being; and she addresses him as "cet ami incomparable"-this my incomparable friend. The mother of Alfieri, in a letter addressed to him, writes thus: "I do not believe that the lady who you

announce is coming with you can feel any liking for me, since I have not the happiness to be acquainted with her. But if this be so, I would fain flatter myself that it is the effect of a tie which I hope may be of a nature to forward your earthly happiness as well as the salvation of your soul. This would be my greatest comfort, as it is my only longing desire."

Those who are of opinion that no marriage ever took place account for it on the ground that the countess could not make up her mind to lay aside her royal pretensions, and that Alfieri had no taste for the vulgar and prosiac state of matrimony, and preferred the condition of lover of a queen. It is certain that the countess clung with great and foolish tenacity to her royal rank; and we are assured by Wraxall, who had an opportunity of visiting her at Paris, that in one of her rooms she had a throne set up, emblazoned with the royal arms of Great Britain; that her attendants habitually addressed her as "Your Majesty;" and that royal honors were paid her by many of her visitors, and especially by ecclesiastics. Both Madame de Staël and the Duchess of Devonshire, who were frequent visitors of the countess, addressed her as a royal personage, probably more from a feeling of compassion than from a sense of propriety. It must have been a great shock both to the countess and to Alfieri, with their high notions and aristocratic pride, to hear the painter David, at their own table, on the day after the terrible procession of the French king and queen from Versailles, use the following language: "It is a great misfortune that this Megara (the French queen) was not torn to pieces or had her throat cut by the women, for there will be no peace during her life."

The progress of the Revolution, and its more ferocious and sanguinary complexion, determined the countess and her companion to quit Paris. They departed from that city in the autumn of 1790 for Normandy, and in the following spring they visited England, passing their time partly in London and partly in the provinces. We can easily imagine that two such notable persons as the countess and Alfieri attracted considerable attention in England, and, notwithstanding their equivocal relation, were received in the very best and most fashionable cir

cles of the metropolis; and what may be | family; and if she failed in this object regarded as very surprising is that the at that period, subsequently, and at a former was presented at court. Horace later date, a grant was accorded from Walpole, in a letter addressed to Miss Berry, on the 19th of May, 1791, speaks of the matter in the following terms: "The Countess of Albany is not only in England, in London, but at this very moment, I believe, in the Palace of St. James's; not restored by as rapid a revolution as the French, but, as was observed at supper at Lady Mount Edgecombe's, by that topsy-turvyhood that characterizes the present age. Within these two days the Pope has been burnt at Paris; Madame du Barry, mistress of Louis Quinze, has dined with the Lord Mayor of London (Boydell), and the Pretender's widow is presented to the Queen of Great Britain. She is to be introduced by her great-grand-father's niece, the young Countess of Aylesbury. That curiosity should bring her here I do not quite wonder, still less that she abhorred her husband; but methinks it is not very well bred to his family, nor very sensible, but a new way of passing eldest."

On the evening of the same day, after the presentation had taken place, the writer added a postcript to his letter, in which he makes the following statement: "Well, I have had an exact account of the interview of the two queens, from one who stood close to them. The Dowager was announced as Princess of Stolberg. She was well dressed, and not at all embarrassed. The king talked to her a good deal, but about her passage, the sea, and general topics; the queen in the same way, but less. Then she stood between the Dukes of Gloucester and Clarence, and had a good deal of conversation with the former, who may perhaps have met her in Italy. Not a word between her and the princess; nor did I hear of the prince, but he was there, and probably spoke to her. The queen looked at her earnestly. To add to the singularity of the day, it is the queen's birthday. Another odd accident; at the opera at the Pantheon, Madame d'Albany was carried into the king's box and sat there. It is not of a piece with her going to court, that she seals with the royal arms."

It was generally supposed that the chief object of her visit to England was to obtain pecuniary aid from the royal

the crown. It appears, from a passage in Lord Stanhope's Life of Pitt, that in 1806, when Cardinal York was forced to leave Rome in consequence of the French invasion, and thereby losing his ecclesiastical income, King George, "on the recommendation of Mr. Pitt, granted a yearly pension of £4000 to the last of the Stuarts. The cardinal died in 1807, when Lord Hawkesbury wrote announcing that a part of this pension, £1600 a year, would be continued by his Majesty to the Countess of Albany." That she was greatly straitened in her finances during her residence in England is evident from one of Alfieri's letters written at that period, 1792, in which he attributes the abridgment of their projected tours in the country to pecuniary difficulties. Accordingly, early in August of that year they quitted England, and returned to France.

But it appears that their stay in Paris was very limited in its duration. After the proceedings of the 10th of August that city became an unsafe place of abode, while, at the same time, it was a matter of great difficulty to escape from it. Provided, however, with passports from the Danish and Venetian ambassadors, the only remaining foreign ministers about the revolutionary government, and furnished also with an order from the sectional authorities, the countess and her companion attempted, on the 18th of August, to quit the French capital. But on arriving at the barrier, though permission to pass was given by the officers of the National Guard posted at the spot, yet their progress was obstructed by a band of the lowest populace, who rushed out from a neighboring cabaret, and vowed vengeance against the aristocrats. It was after a violent struggle, and with considerable difficulty, that they escaped from the ruffians and proceeded on their journey. After remaining a month at Brussels, they travelled through Germany and Switzerland to Florence, where they took up their permanent residence, with occasional excursions into the country. Alfieri employed his time in preparing for the press some of his most distinguished productions, both in prose and in poetry. He died at Florence, on the

7th of October, 1803, in the fifty-fourth of any note, constantly crowded the year of his age. Having all his life long salons of the countess's residence. been a professed free-thinker, he died Among the rest of the literati who without the ministrations of the church, visited the Casa di Alfieri, Lamartine though it was said that, in his last mo- was one, in the year 1810; and he rements, he manifested some religious yearn- cords his impression of the countess in ings, to which the countess paid no at- the following terms: "She was a little tention, and was blamed for her impiety woman, whose figure had lost all lightand thoughtlessness. The truth is that ness and all elegance. The features of she herself was an unfaithful member of her face, too rounded and too obtuse, the Church of Rome. The remains of also preserved no pure line of ideal Alfieri received, notwithstanding the beauty. But her eyes had a light, her poet's skepticism, the homage of so de- fair hair a tint, her mouth an attraction, vout a Roman Catholic as Chateaubriand, all her physiognomy an intelligence and who attended his funeral and bent over grace of expression, which made you rehis coffin. By his last will he left to member if they made you no longer ad"the Countess Louise d'Albany" all his mire. Her soft manner of speaking, her property, "movables and immovables," easy manner, her reassuring familiarity, as well as all his books and Mss., and raised at once those who approached confiding to her care alone the publishing her to her level. You did not know of all his posthumous works-an under- whether she descended to yours or eletaking which she most scrupulously car- vated you to hers, there was so much ried out. nature in her bearing."

If we are to judge her feelings by the following letter, which she addressed to Count Baldelli shortly after the death of Alfieri, her grief at his loss must have been most profound and poignant. "You may judge, my dear Baldelli," she writes, "of my grief by the manner in which I lived with the incomparable friend I have lost. It will be seven weeks next Saturday; and it is as if this misfortune had befallen me yesterday. You who have lost an adored wife may conceive what I feel. I have lost all consolation, support, society, all, all! I am alone in this world, which has become a desert for me."

Alas for the human heart-" deceitful above all things"-and the fickleness of woman! a few months after the death of Alfieri, M. Fabre, a painter of some celebrity, was taken into favor by the disconsolate mourner. Yea, it is even insinuated that she loved Fabre before Alfieri's death. Certain it is that he was installed in the poet's place, in the Casa di Alfieri, as it is still called, and situated in the Lung Arno. The painter was then thirty-seven years of age, and the countess fifty-one. Their relations seemed to create no scandal in the best circles of the Tuscan capital, for at no former period had the Casa di Alfieri been frequented by a society so brilliant and fashionable. The most eminent Florentine nobility, and all foreigners

The company that assembled constantly at her salons excited at last the suspicion and vigilance of the French police; and in the month of May, 1809, she received a peremptory imperial order to repair to Paris without delay. She repaired thither, accompanied by Fabre. No sooner had her arrival been announced, than she was summoned to an interview with the Emperor Napoleon. After a few complimentary words, he immediately addressed her thus: "I know your influence over society in Florence. I know also that you employ it in a sense adverse to my policy; you are an obstacle to my projects of fusion between the Tuscans and the French. This is why I have summoned you to Paris, where you will have full leisure to satisfy your taste for the fine arts." She was detained in Paris till near the end of the year 1810, when she was allowed to return to Florence. Here she ended her days; she died on the 9th of January, 1824. By her will she named Fabre her universal legatee, after bequeathing a few objects of no great value to some of her relatives and special friends.

Fabre thus inherited all the books, statues, paintings, medals, and curiosities collected by both Charles Edward and Alfieri. He now resolved, having raised a monument to the countess, to leave Florence, and to retire to his na