rm totally lost, at
Teneriffe; and a hideous wound, leaving it's indelible scar on his manly
forehead, had recently been inflicted on their heroic friend, at the
battle of the Nile. To say nothing of various slighter casualties; of
the effect of climate; and of those incessant excessive cares,
anxieties, and disappointments, which so soon and so deeply wrinkle the
smoothest brow, and so cruelly furrow the comeliest countenance. If they
were shocked, at reflecting what their incomparable but mutilated friend
must have suffered, in the severe and disastrous fortune of war; they
were enraptured to perceive him by no means impaired in any of those
higher qualities which had given birth to their reciprocal attachments.
Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson, returning from his glorious victory off the
Nile, was the same kind, affable, intelligent, and virtuous friend, as
Captain Nelson had formerly been, when departing for Toulon. An amity
thus founded on a union of superior intellect in the respective parties,
could only be destroyed, however it might be envied, by the decay of
that celestial principle which had served to cement it's origin.

The hero's birth-day occurring on the 29th, when he completed his
fortieth year, a most splendid fete, with a ball and supper, were given
by Sir William and Lady Hamilton, to the nobility and gentry of Naples,
at which upwards of eighteen hundred persons are said to have been
entertained. On this occasion, a grand rostral column was erected in
the principal saloon, with the celebrated old Roman motto--

"VENI; VIDI; VICI!"

which was never more appropriately applied, since it's original adoption
by Julius Caesar.

It is to be regretted, that the harmony of this festival, which cost Sir
William Hamilton two thousand ducats, was considerably deranged, towards
it's conclusion, by the hero's son-in-law; who, it seems, so far forgot
himself, as grossly to offend the very man whom every other person was
delighting to honour. To such a height, indeed, was this young
gentleman's intemperance unfortunately carried, that Captain Troubridge
and another officer felt themselves under the absolute necessity of
conducting him out of the room. This disagreeable occurrence, naturally
agitating the breast of the worthy admiral, who was at that very period
soliciting the indiscreet young man's preferment, in a letter then on
it's way to England, occasioned a violent return of those internal
spasms to which a