With the name of Lady Hamilton is ever associated the names of England’s most famous sailor and of one of her most famous painters.  Hers was a life redolent of ill-repute.  Though her beauty was great, it served her for ill purposes; but she came by her lack of character by heredity.  She was born in 1761, the daughter of a female servant named Harte, and at the age of thirteen was put to service as a nurse in the house of a Mr. Thomas of Hawarden, Flintshire.  She found tending children a tedious task, and forsook it.  At sixteen, she went to London, and became a lady’s maid there.  Her leisure time was spent in reading novels and plays, which inspired a love for the drama.  She early developed a rare ability for pantomimic representation; and this became a favorite form of entertainment in drawing-rooms and studios.  Her duties as a domestic agreed not with the drama, so her next position was as barmaid in a tavern much frequented by actors and artists.  She formed the acquaintance of a Welsh youth, on whose being impressed into the navy, she went to the captain to intercede for him.  The boy was liberated, but the comely intercessor was impressed into the service of the captain.  From him she went to live with a man of wealth; but her extravagance and wilfulness induced him to forego her company.  Then followed a period of the lowest street degradation.  From this state she was taken by a Dr. Graham, who was a lecturer upon health, and exhibited the finely-formed Emma as a perfect specimen of female symmetry.  She became the topic of the town.  Painters, sculptors, and others came to admire the shapely limbs shown under but a thin veil of gauze.  The young bloods of the time worshipped,—­some not afar off; and one of them, Charles Greville, of the Warwick family, who had essayed to educate her to become a fit companion for his elevated existence, maintained her for about four years.  It is recorded, that when he took her to Ranelagh’s the sensation was greater than had ever been produced by any other beauty there.  Not the winsome and witty Mrs. Crewe, nor her friend Mrs. Bouverie; not that first flame of the amorous Prince of Wales, Mrs. Robinson, nor Anne Luttrell, also beloved of royalty; not the Marchioness of Tavistock, whose loveliness has been preserved to us by Sir Joshua, nor the delightful Duchess of Buccleugh; not Lady Cadogan, and not even the dashing Duchess of Devonshire herself,—­caused the comment and admiration this low-born unprincipled young woman now excited.  Mr. Greville would have married her had not his uncle, Sir William Hamilton, interfered.  It is variously stated that Sir William agreed to pay his nephew’s debts if he would yield up his mistress; and also that, in endeavoring to free the young man, the old gentleman himself fell into the snare of her charms.  “She is better than anything in Nature.  In her own particular way she is finer than anything that is to be found in Greek art,” exclaimed this savant on