ostentation, offered to obtain the restoration of his books, a list of which he sent him. Alfieri has left about 1600 volumes: the list contained the names of 150 of the least valuable. He refused to avail himself of what he ironically calls a "French restitution;" and surely, if national contempt and hatred is ever pardonable, it was to be excused in an Italian, who saw his country over-run by soi-disant liberators, who displayed their friendly intentions by a thousand acts of plunder and arrogance. Burning with an unquenchable hatred for all things French, Alfieri returned to Florence with the countess of Albany, in which city he remained till his death. In the tranquillity of his position, his love of study awoke with renewed force. But whether it was that his fiery temperament burnt itself quickly out, or that the ardour of his studies, joined to ill health and intemperate abstemiousness, exhausted him. Alfieri appears to have grown prematurely old. The spirit of invention was dead within him; and nothing can be more deplorable than that which he mistook for such, under whose influence he wrote laughterless comedies and toothless satires, the most dolorous and innoxious that can be imagined. Still, though original invention was dead, industry, perseverance, and fervour in the pursuit of learning were as warm as ever in his heart. He brought to a conclusion his translations of Terence, the "Æneid," and Sallust: the latter is an excellent specimen of style; but his poetic translations are languid and unworthy. As to the unlucky "Misogallo," in which he accumulates, in prose and verse, the whole force of his detestation of the French, it remains a monument of how little men know themselves, and the mistakes to which genius is liable, when it exchanges the nobler pursuit of the good and beautiful, to soil itself by the pettier passions of our nature. While thus employed, a more genial pursuit occupied him for a short period, which he calls waste of time, but which, by linking him in agreeable intercourse with his fellow creatures, and wearing away the rust produced by despondency and over-excited feelings, would have made his latter years happier; but Alfieri, ever bent on fighting with difficulties, and thwarting his natural tendencies, cast from him the medicine offered to his diseased mind. Some friends of his, possessed of histrionic talent, got up his tragedy of "Saul:" Alfieri filled the part of the unfortunate king. Others of his plays were afterwards represented, in which he also acted; but he always preferred the part of Saul, which confirms our opinion, that it is, of all the characters he has pourtrayed, the best fitted for the stage, and the nearest approach to those unrivalled princes of the drama, the heroes of Shakspeare.