A few days after their arrival at Palermo, Lord Nelson received the royal remuneration of his transcendent services, in a stile far surpassing any expectation which his lordship could possibly have formed on the subject; and of which, so rare is any excess of human gratitude, history scarcely affords a single similar instance.

Indeed, when Lady Hamilton, by desire of the Queen of Naples, first announced to his lordship, on the second day after their arrival, that it was the determination of his Sicilian Majesty to create him Duke of Bronte, and to confer on him all the valuable estate and princely privileges attached to that most distinguished and appropriate title; such were his lordship’s nice notions of honour, that he positively protested against receiving any reward from that sovereign, for what he considered as a mere faithful discharge of the duty which he owed to his own.  It was not the formal “Nolo episcopari!”—­“I am unwilling to become a bishop, or to take on myself the episcopal character!”—­of every new bishop; who is injudiciously constrained, by a singular perversion of propriety, to prepare for the exercise of the most sacred of all functions, by making a declaration which, though it ought, in a spiritual sense, to be strictly correct, is extremely subject, at best, to be considered as not altogether sincere:  but, in truth, the spontaneous and felt sense of that dignified delicacy of honourable conduct, by which his lordship was ever directed; and of which persons of vulgar intellect, who are by no means fitted to form any just estimate of the actions of so exalted a character, will probably be weak enough still to doubt the actual existence.  It is certain, nevertheless, that Lord Nelson resolutely held out against the acceptance of these elevated dignities, and their annexed emoluments, for two or three days, at least, notwithstanding all the intreaties of Sir William and Lady Hamilton:  nor did this incomparable man finally agree to receive them—­maintaining, to the last, that he could not do so without subjecting the purity of his motives, in what he had happily effected, to the opprobrium of unjust suspicion—­till Lady Hamilton, at the express instance of the queen, solicited the inflexible hero, even on her knees, to consent to the wishes of these truly amiable and most munificent sovereigns; as requisite to demonstrate that, amidst the too rigid sense which he evidently entertained of what might seem to him proper for the maintenance of his own honour, he was not altogether unregardful of what the world, as well as themselves, must ever consider as absolutely necessary for the preservation of their’s.  The exquisite address of this argument, as suggested by her Sicilian Majesty, and pressed by the unaffected eloquence of her ladyship, was too powerful to be opposed.  His lordship could offer nothing sufficiently substantial against such persuasive wisdom; and, being unable longer to reason, he could no longer continue to resist.