-of the influence in her power
to exert. "We all feel ourselves deeply impressed with the horrid
crime of disaffection to one's lawful sovereign, ... but when we
consider the frailty of human nature," &c. "Advise those Neapolitans
not to be too sanguinary," wrote Keith to Nelson, apparently
immediately after receiving the news of Caracciolo's hanging.

The abrupt execution of Caracciolo was an explosion of fierce
animosity long cherished, pardonable perhaps in a Neapolitan royalist,
but not in a foreign officer only indirectly interested in the issues
at stake; and hence it is that the fate of that one sufferer has
aroused more attention and more sympathy than that of the numerous
other victims, put to death by the King's command after ordinary
processes of law. It stands conspicuous as the act of an English
officer imbued with the spirit of a Neapolitan Bourbon official.
"Could it ever happen," he wrote to Acton, some months after this,
"that any English minister wanted to make me an instrument of hurting
the feelings of His Sicilian Majesty, I would give up my commission
sooner than do it.... I am placed in such a situation--a subject of
one King by birth, and, as far as is consistent with my allegiance to
that King, a voluntary subject of His Sicilian Majesty--that if any
man attempted to separate my two Kings, by all that is sacred, I
should consider even putting that man to death as a meritorious
act."[87] On the other hand, it must be considered that Nelson, though
humane, tended even in his calmest moments to severity towards
military offenders. Writing with reference to a captain convicted of
misbehavior before the enemy, he said, "If a man does not do his
utmost in time of action, I think but one punishment ought to be
inflicted;" and it may be inferred that he would have approved Byng's
execution, where cowardice was not proved, but grave military
dereliction was.

On the 10th of July the King of the Two Sicilies arrived from Palermo
in the Bay of Naples, and went on board the "Foudroyant," which, for
the whole time he remained,--about four weeks,--became practically his
seat of government. There the royal standard was hoisted, there the
King held his levees, and there business of State was transacted. In
and through all moved the figures of Sir William and Lady Hamilton,
the latter considering herself, and not without cause, the
representative of the Queen. The latter had remained in Palermo, being
out of