out L3000 a year. It
was some days before he could be persuaded to accept it; the argument
which finally prevailed is said to have been suggested by the queen, and
urged, at her request, by Lady Hamilton upon her knees. "He considered
his own honour too much," she said, "if he persisted in refusing what
the king and queen felt to be absolutely necessary for the preservation
of theirs." The king himself, also, is said to have addressed him in
words, which show that the sense of rank will sometimes confer a virtue
upon those who seem to be most unworthy of the lot to which they have
been born: "Lord Nelson, do you wish that your name alone should pass
with honour to posterity; and that I, Ferdinand Bourbon, should
appear ungrateful?" He gave him also, when the dukedom was accepted, a
diamond-hilted sword, which his father, Char. III. of Spain, had given
him on his accession to the throne of the two Sicilies. Nelson said,
"the reward was magnificent, and worthy of a king, and he was determined
that the inhabitants on the domain should be the happiest in all his
Sicilian majesty's dominions. Yet," said he, speaking of these and
the other remunerations which were made him for his services, "these
presents, rich as they are, do not elevate me. My pride is, that at
Constantinople, from the grand seignior to the lowest Turk, the name of
Nelson is familiar in their mouths; and in this country I am everything
which a grateful monarch and people can call me." Nelson, however, had a
pardonable pride in the outward and visible signs of honour which he
had so fairly won. He was fond of his Sicilian title; the signification,
perhaps, pleased him; Duke of Thunder was what in Dahomy would be called
a STRONG NAME; it was to a sailor's taste; and certainly, to no man
could it ever be more applicable. But a simple offering, which he
received not long afterwards, from the island of Zante, affected him
with a deeper and finer feeling. The Greeks of that little community
sent him a golden-headed sword and a truncheon, set round with all the
diamonds that the island could furnish, in a single row. They thanked
him "for having, by his victory, preserved that part of Greece from the
horrors of anarchy; and prayed that his exploits might accelerate the
day, in which, amidst the glory and peace of thrones, the miseries of
the human race would cease." This unexpected tribute touched Nelson to
the heart. "No officer," he said, "had ever received from