and charms of Lady Hamilton, to whom he gives the credit of engineering the embarkation of the Royal Family and two and a half million sterling aboard the Vanguard.  After giving St. Vincent another dose of Emma, he goes on to say, “It is my duty to tell your Lordship the obligations which the whole Royal Family, as well as myself, are under on this trying occasion to her Ladyship.”  Her Ladyship, still hankering after her old friend Greville, writes him, “My dear adorable queen and I weep together, and now that is our only comfort.”  It is no concern of ours, but it looks uncommonly as though Greville still held the field, and the opinion of many that Nelson would not have had much chance against her former lover is borne out by many facts.

Amongst the saddest stories that raged about the Hamiltons, their friends, and Nelson was the scandal of gambling for large stakes.  Some are persistent in the assertion that the report was well founded, and others that it was not so bad as it was made out to be.  Lady Hamilton asserted that the stories were all falsehoods invented by the Jacobinical party, but her Ladyship’s veracity was never to be relied upon.  Perhaps a foundation of truth and a large amount of exaggeration sums up the reports, so we must let it go at that.  Troubridge seems to have been convinced that his Admiral was in the midst of a fast set, for he sends a most imploring remonstrance to him to get out of it and have no more incense puffed in his face.  This was fine advice, but the victor of the Nile made no response.

IV

Nelson was little known to his countrymen before the St. Vincent battle.  But after the victory of the Nile his name became immortal, and he could take any liberty he liked with our national conventionalisms.  Even his love affairs were regarded as heroics.  He refused occasionally to carry out instructions when he thought his own plans were better, and it was winked at; but had any of them miscarried, the memory of St. Vincent and the Nile would not have lived long.

When he arrived with the Hamiltons in London after his long absence and victorious record, the mob, as usual, took the horses from the carriage and dragged him along Cheapside amid tumultuous cheers.  Whenever he appeared in public the same thing happened.  At Court, things were different.  His reception was offensively cold, and George III ran some risk when he affronted his most popular subject by turning his back on him.  Whatever private indiscretions Nelson may have been guilty of, nothing could justify so ungrateful an act of ill-mannered snobbery.  The King should have known how to distinguish between private weakness, however unconventional, and matchless public service.  But for the fine genius and patriotism of this noble fellow, he might have lost his crown.  The temper of a capricious public in an era of revolution should not be tested by freaks of royal self-righteousness, while its imagination is being stirred by the deeds of a national hero.  His action might have brought the dignity of George’s kingliness into the gutter of ridicule, which would have been a public misfortune.