en 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.

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