tte, was much more of a man than the King.
The intimacy became the talk of Naples, and the report spread, easily
believed, because in the nature of things very likely, that the
personal relations between the two women cloaked a great deal of
underhand work, such as often accompanies diplomatic difficulties. Nor
did Lady Hamilton lack natural qualifications for the position into
which she undoubtedly wished to thrust herself. She was a brave,
capable, full-blooded, efficient woman, not to be daunted by fears or
scruples; a woman who, if only nerve and intelligence were required,
and if distinction for herself was at stake, could be fairly depended
upon. There was in her make-up a good deal of pagan virtue. She could
appreciate and admire heroism, and, under the stimulus of excitement,
of self-conscious magnanimity, for the glitter of effective
performance and the applause of onlookers, she was quite capable of
heroic action. It was this daring spirit, coarsely akin to much that
was best in himself, and of which she made proof under his own eyes,
that Nelson recognized; and this, in the thought of the writer, was
the body of truth, from which his enthusiasm, enkindled by her charms
and by her tenderness towards himself, projected such a singular
phantasm of romantic perfections.

Such was the woman, and such the position in the public eye that she
had gained for herself, when to Naples, first in the European
continent, came the news which made Nelson for the moment the most
conspicuous man of the day. He had achieved a triumph the most
startlingly dazzling that had yet been gained, and over one who up to
that time had excelled all other warriors in the brilliancy and extent
of his victories. Bonaparte was not yet the Napoleon whom history
knows, but thus far he had been the most distinguished child of the
Revolution. That Lady Hamilton then and there formed the purpose of
attaching Nelson to her, by the bonds which have sullied his memory,
is most improbable; but it is in entire keeping with the career and
the self-revelations of the woman that she should, instinctively, if
not with deliberation, have resolved to parade herself in the glare of
his renown, and appear in the foreground upon the stage of his
triumph, the chief dispenser of his praises, the patroness and
proprietor of the hero. The great occasion should shed a glamour round
her, together with him. "Emma's passion is admiration," Greville had
written soon aft