a British warship to take the priests to Palermo, so
that they might be degraded in a proper, Christian fashion and then
brought to Naples for execution. Troubridge was audaciously requested
to appoint a hangman (it may be he was asked to combine this with his
other naval duties), and knowing the fine sense of noble dignity in
the average sailor, we can easily imagine the flow of adjectives that
accompanied the refusal, and how he would relate the outrage to which
he had been subjected in quarterdeck language, that need not be here
repeated, to his superior officer, Admiral Nelson, who must have felt
the degradation of being selected to carry out as dirty a piece of
work as ever devolved upon a public servant. To fight for his King and
country was the joy of his soul, but to be selected as wet-nurse to
the kingdom of Naples and the dignitaries that were at the head of it
would have been an unbearable insult to his sense of proportion had it
not been for the fulsome flattery, to which he was so susceptible,
which was adroitly administered by the ladies of the Court, headed by
the Queen and supplemented by the wife of Sir William Hamilton.

There is always some fatal weakness about a great man that lures him
into littleness, and this was an overwhelming tragedy in Nelson's
career. The approbation of men was gratefully received and even asked
for, but the adoration of women reduced him to helplessness. He was
drugged by it, and the stronger the doses, the more efficacious they
were. They nullified the vision of the unwholesome task he was set to
carry out until his whole being revolted against the indignity of it,
when he would pour out his wrath to Lady Hamilton as he did at the
time when Troubridge would report to him his own trials. No doubt this
caused him to realize the chaotic condition of public affairs, for he
writes to the lady that "politics are hateful to him, and that
Ministers of Kings are the greatest scoundrels that ever lived." The
King of Naples is, he suspects, to be superseded by a prince who has
married a Russian Archduchess. This, presumably, had been arranged by
the "great political scoundrels." He stands loyally by Ferdinand, but
soon all the work of that part of his life that gave him socially so
much pleasure and professionally so much misery is to be left for
evermore, and his great talents used in other and higher spheres.

He had retaken Naples from the French, who had set up the Parthenopean
R