dgment was
sound. We may term the infatuation a deteriorated state of mind, but
_he_ was sustained by the belief that she was a spirit unto him while
he lived, and with his last gasp, as he was passing into the shadows,
he bestowed her as a legacy to his country. We shall have something to
say hereafter as to how the British Government dealt with their great
Admiral's dying injunction.

The Neapolitan atmosphere was vile enough, and might well have made
even men and women who knew the loose side of life shrink from it, but
it can never be claimed that it had a demoralizing influence on Emma,
who at an early age became familiar with unspeakable vices which left
her little to learn at the time Greville sold her to his uncle, who
took her to a centre of sordid uncleanness, there to become his wife
after a brief association as his mistress. We may have no misgiving as
to her aptitude in acquiring anything she chose that was left for her
to learn from a community of debauchees and parasites.

The wonder is that her brain did not succumb to the poisonous
influences by which she was surrounded, and that the poor girl did not
sink into the depths of that luxurious sensuality which characterized
Neapolitan society at that time. It was a more distinguished and
fascinating type of debauchery than that which she had known in other
days in England, and from which Greville had rescued her. The
temptation to plunge into the boisterous merriment of a higher order
of depravity than that to which she had been accustomed must have been
very great to such a temperament as hers. But she worthily kept her
wild, wayward spirit under restraint, and, according to Sir William
Hamilton, she conducted herself in a way that caused him to be
satisfied with his reforming guidance. She adapted herself to the ways
of the more select social community of her new existence, and at the
time Nelson made her acquaintance she had really become a creditable
member of the society in which she moved. In every respect she was
congenial to him. He never lost a chance of applauding her gifts and
brazenly exempting himself from all moral restrictions, except, as I
have said before, when he was seized with a spontaneous fit of
goodness. He would then clumsily try to conceal the passion that
obsessed him. He did not brood long over trifles of this kind, merely
because he had lost, if ever he possessed, the power of consecutive
reasoning in matters of moral conventio