the court of Naples. But this latter was found not so difficult a barrier as that
which it was considered necessary to surmount before attempting it. The
beauty and, perhaps, the engaging talents of lady Hamilton procured for her
notoriety, and notoriety brings friends. She contrived to be essentially useful,
and very agreeable, to the king and queen of the Sicilies; and procured for
herself their friendship, and for her husband additional honours. Her connection with lord Nelson, and the manner in which she did the state service, are too well known; but justice, on passing speedily over the unwelcome subject, cannot help acknowledging that she seems here to have felt something like real attachment. The latter days of this woman restored her to the gloom and obscurity of her origin. She made ineffectual attempts after the death of her husband to procure a pension from government. Probably urged by necessity, she insulted the ashes of the great departed, by publishing her correspondence with lord Nelson, followed by a denial of her accession to the act, which did not deceive the public. She died at Calais in February, 1815, in miserable obscurity and debt, without a friend to follow her to the grave, and those who took an interest in the youthful daughter of Nelson, with difficulty prevented her from being seized, according to a barbarous law. for the debts of her mother.
But we return with pleasure to the more legitimate object of our details. There was one subject of importance on which some prejudices on the part of the Sicilian government, prevented "Sir William Hamilton from acquiring that knowledge which he thought might be interesting and useful to his country. A chamber in the royal museum of Portici had been set aside for containing the manuscripts, of which a small collection had been found in an edifice in Pompeii; and on the discovery that these calcined masses were genuine manuscripts of the days of Pliny, the greatest curiosity was manifested to acquire a knowledge of their contents. The government was assailed by strangers for the watchfulness with which these were kept from their view, and the little exertion which had been bestowed in divulging their contents: the latter accusation was perhaps scarcely just ; some venerable adherents of the church of Rome did not hesitate to spend months of their own labour, in exposing to the world the sentences which an ancient Roman had taken a few minutes to compose. The public were soon made sufficiently acquainted with the subject to be disappointed at the exposure of a few sentences of the vilest of scholastic stuff; and the narrow-mindedness of which Sir William Hamilton had to complain, has been since dis- continued, and England has had an opportunity of showing her skill in the art of unrolling papyrus. To acquire the information, for which he found the usual means unavailing, Sir William Hamilton entered into an agreement with father Anthony Piaggi, a Piarist monk, the most diligent of the decypherers, by which, in consideration of a salary of 100, th@ latter was to furnish the former with a weekly sheet of original information, which, to avoid ministerial detection, was to be written in cipher. The contract seems to have been executed to the satisfaction of both parties, and Sir William procured for father Anthony an addition to his salary, equal to the sum at which it was originally fixed; and en the death of the father in 1798, he bequeathed all his manuscripts and papers to his patron. Sir William Hamilton, on his visit to Britain in 1791, was created a privy councillor. The circumstances which in 1798 compelled him to accompany the Sicilian court to Palermo, are matter of history, and need not be here
repeated In the year 1800, he left Sicily, and soon afterwards, accompanied by captain Leake, and lieutenant Hayes, undertook a journey through Egypt, visiting and describing with great minuteness the city of Thebes, and the other well-known parts of that interesting country. The notes collected by him on this occasion were published after his death in the year 1809, under the title
