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Showed them how the skin was ripped
To make a vellum manuscript;

How to stretch the parchment tight,
How (with pounce) to make it white;
Taught them to make cinnabar,
Lampblack, gum, and vinegar;
How to temper, how to use
Azure, roset, and ceruse;
How upon a stone to mill
Ochre, alum-glass, brazil;
How to size, and lay with care
Goldleaf on the tacky glair

With the pencil and the brush,
And burnish it with wild-boar's tush.

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Next, a swallow flying high
And balancing in palest sky,
The world below him lying dumb,

Would pipe the signal, ' Day has come';
And then the birds would hail the light
And sing a requiem to night;

And then the scent of may would rise
And tears would fill Johannes' eyes..
He could not but recall the day-
Years ago, that first of May!—
When rising early he had gone
To gather may with Alison;

And how they rambled hand-in-hand
Through the summer-breathing land,
Plucked the white and pulled the red,
What he whispered, what she said . . .
Just a word: they rambled on.
Cruel pretty Alison! . . .

Then through the year he would redeem
By penance his May-morning dream.

Johannes never sang his Nunc
Dimittis, as becomes a monk.
One first-of-May the matin-bell
Failed to rouse him from the spell;
And even when the prior spake
Exhorting him, he did not wake-
Nor slept, but lay with eyes astare,
Stroking the shaggy pelt of bear
That covered him: the tufted curls
Felt as soft as any girl's . . .
The brethren watched; perhaps a few
Guessed the cause-the prior knew ;
And, kneeling, for his soul's release,
Absolved him, and he died in peace.

They buried him beneath the aisle.
The children missed him-for a while.

F. S.

LADY HAMILTON AND HORATIA.

THE papers of my great-grandfather, Sir Harris Nicolas, have recently come into my possession, and the letters addressed to him by Nelson's daughter Horatia, while he was bringing out his edition of Nelson's despatches, still possess their interest, though they have lumbered in an old trunk for upwards of sixty years. They can hardly be said to contribute new facts, except for showing that Mr. Matcham, her uncle by marriage, fetched Horatia from Calais after Lady Hamilton's death, and not the second Earl Nelson and Mr. Henry Cadogan as is commonly related; but they undoubtedly shed some light on Lady Hamilton's character, and Horatia's recollections of her early life with Lady Hamilton after Nelson's death cannot be called dull.

Sir Harris first met Horatia, who was born on January 29, 1801, and in 1822 married the Rev. Philip Ward, in 1844, and their correspondence lasted till 1846 and chiefly consisted of an examination of the various fictions employed by Nelson and Lady Hamilton to conceal the parentage of Horatia. Both Sir Harris and Mrs. Ward died in ignorance of the real facts, and in his last volume of the despatches Sir Harris even conjectures that the relations of Nelson and Lady Hamilton were platonic, although his opinion on that one point must subsequently have changed, and was never more than merely conjectural. But Sir Harris did not long survive the completion of his Nelson volumes. Worn out by a succession of misfortunes and disappointments, he sank under them like Sir Walter Scott, and died at Boulogne in 1848, engaged on fresh work to the last. He was in his last days editing the papers of Sir Hudson Lowe, and had even jotted down some notes for a history of Boulogne. His comparatively short career (for he died just under fifty) had been indeed full and varied. In his teens he had captured French frigates off the coast of Calabria, and invented a fresh signalling system. Just out of his teens he had been called to the Bar, and stood for Parliament in the cause of Reform; he had written erudite works on every conceivable topic which had, as he told Carlyle, 'ruined nearly all the booksellers in London,' he had spent an extraordinary amount

of his energies and patrimony in getting rid of the abuses in connexion with public records, had built up a flourishing practice in peerage cases which fell greatly in value owing to Sir Robert Peel's decision in 1840 not to revive peerages in abeyance, and had kept up a running commentary on general topics in most of the newspapers and reviews of the day. History and research, as we know it now, had scarcely come into existence in those days, and he suffered as all pioneers must. But his friend, Mrs. Horatia Ward, lived to an advanced age, and died in 1881 without ever knowing, so far as I am aware, who her mother was, or seeing among the Morrison papers (which were not acquired by Mr. Morrison till 1887) the documents which have now established the facts of the case.

These facts are as follows. As the result of Nelson's intimacy with Lady Hamilton in the spring of 1800, Horatia was born on January 29, 1801, actually at 23 Piccadilly, Sir William Hamilton's house, and was within a week of that date smuggled by Lady Hamilton (some say in a muff) to a house in Marylebone, where she was put in the care of a nurse. Lady Hamilton frequently visited the child there, and the child was often brought to the house of Sir William Hamilton. The child was baptized in 1803 as Horatia Nelson Thompson, at the Marylebone Registry, and her birth was antedated to October 1800, presumably to conceal the fact of her real origin.

Nelson's letters at first mention a 'Mr. Thompson,' the fictitious father, but he afterwards acknowledges himself as the father, and constantly refers to an equally fictitious 'Mrs. Thompson as the mother. The name is not always spelt the same way. A letter from Nelson to Lady Hamilton, the existence of which was unknown both to Sir Harris and Mrs. Ward, has long since shown that Lady Hamilton was the mother, and further documents have shown that in 1804 Lady Hamilton had another child by Nelson called 'Emma,' who did not long survive her birth. Lady Hamilton was appointed by Nelson to be guardian of the child, and in all letters sent through the post (and not by a trusted messenger) she is referred to as such. The recapitulation of these facts is for the general reader a necessary preliminary to the perusal of the following letters.

It is certainly odd that Lady Hamilton should not only have convinced Nelson that Horatia was her first child (which was not the fact) but also have successfully prevented her own daughter from knowing that she was her mother, and concealed from her

the birth of the second child. After this we may even believe that Sir William Hamilton remained unaware of Horatia's birth in his own house. Lady Hamilton had of course every reason for not acknowledging Horatia as her own child, since otherwise her intimacy with Nelson was not strictly proved, and she could always claim the benefit of the doubt-a most important consideration having regard to the fact that she was always expecting and asking for a public pension. The first extract I shall give of the letters to Sir Harris is as follows:

Would she (i.e. Lady Hamilton) have dared to have a child brought constantly to her husband's house had she had a nearer interest in it than that of friendship to whom it belonged? It has always appeared to me that she was just the woman who, to gain a stronger hold on Lord Nelson's affection, would be likely to under. take the care of a child which he might feel anxious about, to show herself above common jealousies. The only quarrel which I ever heard between Lady H. and her mother took place when we lived at Richmond, when I suppose I had been very naughty, for I was in sad disgrace, and had received a most pathetic lecture on the error of my conduct. Mrs. Cadogan pleaded for me, saying that I had done nothing requiring such a severe scolding, when Lady H. became angry, and said that she alone had authority over me. Mrs. Cadogan, rather irritated, said Really, Emma, you make as much fuss about the child as if she were your own daughter,' when Lady H. turned round, much incensed as I was present, and replied, Perhaps she is.' Mrs. Cadogan looked at her and replied: 'Emma, that will not do with me; you know that I know better.' Lady H. then ordered me out of the room. On her death-bed, at Calais, I earnestly prayed her to tell me who my mother was, but she would not, influenced then, I think, by the fear that I might leave her.

Another letter contains an interesting account of Lady Hamilton's movements after Nelson's death.

Poor Lady H., as you are aware, left Merton in consequence of her not being able to remain there for pecuniary reasons. I believe that then she was considerably involved; but, of course, I was too young to know much about it. She then went to Richmond to live, and took a seven years' lease of the house in Herring Court. After a year or two she left, and took lodgings in town in Bond Street, where her brother died. She then quitted those apartments and took lodgings in Piccadilly, where she stayed about a few months. From there she went to board and lodge in a house in Dover Street, and after that took a house in Bond Street, where she remained till she became too involved to remain at large,' and then went to Fulham to Mrs. Billington, where she remained secreted for some weeks, having sent what she most valued in papers before her. From thence she went to Temple Place in the rules of the Bench, and after living in them for more than a year, she left London for Calais. At the time of her death she was in great distress, and had I not, unknown to her, written to Lord Nelson to ask the loan of £10, and to another kind friend of hers who immediately sent her £20, she would not literally have had one shilling till her next allowance became due. Latterly, she was hardly sensible. I imagine that her illness originally began by being bled, whilst labouring under an attack of jaundice, whilst she lived at Richmond. From that time she never was well, and added to this the baneful habit she had of

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