on of
him. He became immediately one of the little coterie centring round
Her Majesty, and he reflected its tone and partisanship, which,
fostered probably in the intimate conversations of the two women, were
readily transmitted to the minister by the wife whom he adored. The
Queen, impetuous, enterprising, and headstrong, like her mother and
sister, moved more by feminine feelings of hatred and revenge against
the French than by well-balanced considerations of policy, not only
favored war, but wished to precipitate the action of the Emperor by
immediately attacking the French in the Roman territory. The decision
and daring of such a course was so consonant to Nelson's own
temperament that he readily sympathized; but it is impossible to admit
its wisdom, from either a political or military standpoint. It was an
excessively bad combination, substituting isolated attacks for
co-operation, and risking results upon the chance of prompt support,
by a state which would be offended and embarrassed by the step taken.

Under ordinary conditions Nelson might have seen this, but he was well
handled. Within three days he had been persuaded that upon his
personal presence depended the salvation of Italy. "My head is quite
healed, and, if it were necessary, I could not at present leave Italy,
who looks up to me as, under God, its Protector." He continually, by
devout recollection of his indebtedness to God, seeks to keep himself
in hand. "I am placed by Providence in that situation, that all my
caution will be necessary to prevent vanity from showing itself
superior to my gratitude and thankfulness,"--but the current was too
strong for him, and was swollen to a torrent by the streams of
adulation, which from all quarters flowed in upon a temperament only
too disposed to accept them. "Could I, my dearest Fanny," he writes to
Lady Nelson, "tell you half the honours which are shown me here, not a
ream of paper would hold it." A grand ball was given on his birthday,
September 29; and a rostral column was "erected under a magnificent
canopy, never, Lady Hamilton says, to come down while they remain at
Naples." Within a week the conviction of his own importance led him to
write to Lady Hamilton, evidently for transmission to the Queen, an
opinion, or rather an urgent expression of advice, that Naples should
at once begin war. It is only conjectural to say that this opinion,
which rested on no adequate knowledge of the strength of the
Neap