LITTLE JOURNEYS

words were of her-good bye!" and he covered his face and the stars on his breast with a handkerchief, so that his men might not recognize the dead form of their chief as they hurried by at their work.

Nelson was dead-but Trafalgar was won.

ADY HAMILTON was unfortunate in having her history written only by her enemies-written with goose-quills.

Taine says, "the so-called best society in England is notoriously corrupt and frigidly religious. It places a penalty on honesty; a premium on hypocrisy, and having no virtues of its own, it cries shrilly about virtue-as if there were but one, and that negative."

Nelson in his innocence did not know English society, otherwise he would not have commended Lady Hamilton to the gratitude of the English. It was a little like commending her to a pack of wolves. The sum of ten thousand pounds was voted to each of Nelson's sisters, but not a penny to Lady Hamilton, "my wife before the eyes of God," as he himself expressed it.

Fortunately an annuity of four hundred pounds had been arranged for Horatia the daughter of Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton, and this comparatively small sum saved Lady Hamilton and her child from absolute want. As it was, Lady Hamilton was arrested on a charge

of debt and imprisoned, and practically driven out of LITTLE England, although the sisters of Lord Nelson believed JOURNEYS in her, and respected her to the last. Lady Hamilton died in France in 1813. Her daughter, Horatia Nelson, became a strong, excellent and beautiful woman, passing away in 1881. She married the Reverend Philip Ward of Teventer, Kent, and raised a family of nine children. One of her sons moved to America and made his mark upon the stage, and also in letters. The American branch spell the name "Warde." In England several of the grandchildren of Lord Nelson have made the name of "Ward" illustrious in art and literature.

Mrs. Ward wrote a life of her mother, but a publisher was never found for the book, and the manuscript was lost or destroyed. Some extracts from it, however, were published in the London "Athenæum" in 1877, and the picture of Lady Hamilton there presented was that of a woman of great natural endowments; a welling heart of love; great motherly qualities; high intellect and aspiration, caught in the web of unkind condition in her youth, but growing out of this and developing a character which made her the rightful mate of Nelson, the invincible, Nelson, the incorruptible, against whose loyalty and honesty not even his enemies ever said a word, save that he fell a victim to his love, his love for

one woman.

Loveless, unloved and unlovable Tammas the Titan, from Ecclefechan, writing in spleen, says: "Nelson's unhappy affair with a saucy jade of a wench, has supplied the world more gabble than all of his victories."

LITTLE

And possibly the affair in question was quite as imJOURNEYS portant for good as the battles won. The world might do without war, but I make the hazard it could not long survive if men and women ceased to love and mate. However, I may be wrong.

People whose souls are made of dawnstuff and starshine may make mistakes, but God will not judge them by these alone. But for the love of Lady Hamilton, Nelson would probably never have lived to fight Trafalgar one of the pivotal battles of the world. Nelson saved England from the fell clutch of the Corsicanand Lady Hamilton saved Nelson from insanity and death. Nelson knew how to do three great things-how to fight, how to love, and how to die.