In June, he left England for Holland; and at the Hague for the first time became really in love, and at the same time his heart opened itself to friendship. The lady whom he admired, and who returned his affection, was unfortunately a married woman, but an Italian education and habits prevented any scruples of conscience from interrupting the felicity he enjoyed. His friend was Don José d'Alcunha, Portuguese minister in Holland. Alfieri describes him as clever and original, with a cultivated understanding and firm unbending character: with tact and efficacy the Portuguese awoke in his new friend shame for his idle, aimless life. It was a curious circumstance, he tells us, that he never felt a strong desire for mental improvement, except at such periods as when he was passionately in love, and his time so employed that he could bestow none of it on literature. In process of time, when he became worthily attached, he may have perceived in this, the beneficent action of the passions in our nature, when their objects are what they ought to be--ennobling and permanent. After a period of great happiness, he was forced to separate from the lady to whom he was attached,--she being obliged to join her husband, who had gone to Switzerland; and Alfieri suffered the mildest of the punishments that result from loving one to whom you cannot consecrate your life. But though a separation, attended neither by disastrous incident nor infidelity, is the gentlest penance for such an error, it visited the young Italian in no gentle manner. It was a natural wish, as any one will acknowledge who has attended to his own sensations, on first being subjected to passionate sorrow, that which he formed--for being bled: prevented by his friend and a faithful servant from allowing this bleeding to be fatal, his grief became gloomy and taciturn; Holland grew hateful to him; and he returned to Italy with the utmost speed--never resting till he found himself at Cumiano, in his sister's villa, after a three weeks' journey, during which time he saw nothing and said nothing, communicating only by signs with his faithful servant, Elia, who never lost sight of him, and bore with exemplary patience his caprices and heedless tyranny. This state of melancholy regret augmented his love of solitude, and engendered, moreover, a desire to study: he passed the winter at Turin, in his sister's house, seeing absolutely no society, and spending his time in reading. He turned over the pages of Voltaire, Rousseau, Helvetius, and Montesquieu; but his chief delight was derived from the perusal of Plutarch's lives. His mind was strongly excited by the heroic virtues of the great men of whom he read, and tears of mingled admiration and indignation gushed from his eyes. He felt the misfortune it was to be a native of Piedmont; and to have been born in a country, and at a time, when no scope was afforded for word or action, scarcely any for thought and feeling.