This and every other requisite arrangement being completed, for the peace and security of his Sicilian Majesty’s Neapolitan dominions, and the due distribution of the British squadron under Lord Nelson’s command, his lordship immediately sailed for Palermo, with the king and his principal ministers, and his friends Sir William and Lady Hamilton; all impatient personally to acquaint the queen with the particulars of those joyful events which had filled every bosom with sensations of the purest delight.  Her majesty, indeed, had been regularly apprised of the various transactions, immediately as they occurred:  but, in an affair of such variety and importance as the recovery of a wrested kingdom from foreign and domestic enemies, ten thousand little occurrences, often most powerfully interesting to souls of genuine grandeur, and forming the chief charm for minds of a delicate and tender susceptibility, may be supposed to have attracted those who were present amidst these impressive scenes, absolutely incommunicable by the most practised and facile pen, and only to be successfully detailed with the many adventitious aids of personal elocution.  The feelings of the king, as he benignantly eyed his noble benefactors; of the illustrious hero, and his two estimable friends, who were the honoured objects of his majesty’s just regards; must be left to the conception of the reader:  it would be difficult to decide, which enjoyed, on this occasion, the greatest portion of substantial felicity; the grateful monarch thus happily restored to his rightful throne, or the generous friends who had so disinterestedly and successfully accomplished the arduous task of replacing him.

Fraught with these dignified sentiments, they no sooner arrived off Palermo, on the 8th inst. than the queen, and royal offspring, sympathetically replete with equally exalted sensations, and who had impatiently awaited the happy return of his majesty, came out, in the royal barge; attended by innumerable pleasure-boats filled with loyal Sicilians of all ranks, who hailed their beloved sovereign with acclamations of the sincerest joy.  Her majesty, overwhelmed with delight, no sooner got on board the Foudroyant, than she embraced Lady Hamilton, who had respectfully hastened to receive the queen; and, at the same instant, hung round her ladyship’s neck a rich chain of gold, to which was suspended a beautiful portrait of herself, superbly set in diamonds, with the motto—­“Eterna Gratitudine!”—­“Eternal Gratitude!”—­inscribed at the back of the picture.  To Lord Nelson, her majesty also united with the king in the highest degree of grateful regard which it is possible for language to convey.  He was addressed as their preserver, their deliverer, their restorer; and it was easy to perceive that, even when they were silent, their great minds meditated some noble reward.  Nor were the substantial services of Sir William Hamilton, though of a less brilliant nature than those of his heroic friend, passed over without the most grateful acknowledgments of their Sicilian Majesties; whose interests that wise and worthy minister had uniformly promoted, for a long series of years, with a zeal little less ardent than that which he is well known to have constantly exerted for the honour and advantage of his own sovereigns, whom himself and lady so splendidly and munificently represented at the Neapolitan court.