Affections and habits which had subsisted so long could not be thus rudely torn up without intense suffering. After several years of happiness, Alfieri found himself cast from the shelter he had selected, wherein to place his warm and sensitive heart, upon solitude, uncertainty, and bitter regret. Poetry and composition became distasteful to him; he could not even enjoy his friend Gori's society, whom he visited immediately upon quitting Rome: he was ashamed to annoy him by his melancholy, and his restlessness and desire for travel returned. He visited Venice, and wandered for some time in Lombardy, and then again returned to Siena, to attend to the printing of six other tragedies, although he had become indifferent even to the lately engrossing desire of fame; and then he suddenly resolved to visit England, for the sole purpose of buying horses. [Sidenote: 1783. Ætat. 34.] He had long put himself on short allowance with regard to these favourite animals; but, having saved a large sum of ready money, during several years, at first of parsimony, and then of economy, he determined to spend it on the purchase and maintenance of a number of English horses of the best breed. A journey thus undertaken, with but one object, was executed with a mixture of impetuosity and persevering patience characteristic of Alfieri. He went to England; he bought his horses, fourteen in number, to equal that of his tragedies; he transported them safely across the straits of Dover, conducted them with unwearied care through France, and led them across Mont Cenis with a success--they being injured neither in wind or limb--on which he for the moment prided himself scarcely less than on his dramatic labours. On his return to Italy, he remained a few weeks at Turin; and the king showed a disposition to employ him under government. His minister sounded the count: but he refused to entertain any proposition on the subject; for, although he acknowledges that the sovereigns of the house of Savoy were not tyrannically inclined, but showed every inclination to benefit their subjects, his uncompromising, and even fierce, spirit of independence spurned every shackle, and he felt to breathe more freely when he had quitted the territories of Piedmont. The countess of Albany was now on her way to Baden for the summer. She passed northwards along the shores of the Adriatic, while Alfieri proceeded south, by Modena and Pistoia, to Siena. He had resisted the temptation of crossing the narrow portion of Italy between them, and obtaining a brief interview; but when she had arrived at Baden, and he at Siena, this fortitude gave way, and he suddenly left his horses, and his friend Gori, and posted with all haste to Alsatia, there for three months to enjoy her society.