sovereign:  and, though a fiery eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which had been tranquil for the preceding five years, was actually seen to burst forth on the very day, the 24th of January 1799, even that ancient proof of the anger of the saint was, in the madness of the moment, considered as an additional token of his holiness’s approbation!  Such is the inconsistency of untutored folly, and the fate of misinstructed superstition; the power of superior cunning, and the effect of unprincipled deceit.

The concern of the good King and Queen of Naples, at the calamitous effects of these successful stratagems on the deluded people, could not fail to be excessive; and that of our indignant hero, and his estimable friends, were little inferior.  The despicable frauds, by which the miserable vulgar had been ensnared, were to them abundantly manifest; but they well knew that, had they even been present, and assured the credulous creatures, that the liquification of St. Januarius’s blood, and even the blaze of Mount Vesuvius—­which was unaccompanied by any natural overflow of the lava—­were both easily effected by a simple chemical process, and a few kindled faggots and barrels of gunpowder thrown into the crater, they would most probably have been instantly massacred for what the priests must have necessarily pronounced, for their own safety, the most blasphemous of all possible impieties.

In writing, on the 28th of January, to the Honourable Mr. Windham, at Leghorn, Lord Nelson thus foretells the fate of Tuscany, and of all the Emperor of Germany’s Italian dominions.  “Alas!” says his lordship, “the fancied neutrality of Tuscany will be it’s downfall.  You see it, and it cannot fail soon to happen.  Tuscany does not, or cannot, support it’s neutrality for us or Naples; only to protect the French, is this name prostituted.  Seratti, who is a man of sound sense, must see it.  When the emperor loses Tuscany and Naples—­which, I am bold to say, the conduct of his ministry conduces to do more than the arms of the French—­his newly-acquired dominions will not keep to him.  Active, not passive; actions, are the only weapons to meet these scoundrels with.  We can, as your excellency knows, have no desire to distress the Grand Duke by our conduct; on the contrary, it is our duty to support his royal highness against the tyranny of the French.  Your excellency will be so good as to say, for me, to his royal highness, that an English ship of war shall, as long as he pleases, remain at Leghorn, ready to receive his person and family; for, unless the emperor acts speedily, the British flag will be his only security.  Tuscany has the choice, to act like men, and take the chance of war; or, in a few weeks, to become another conquest of the French, and to form a new republic.”  Speaking of Naples, he, says—­“We have heard nothing since the 19th; and, from those accounts, it is difficult to say, what turn the mob will take; at that time, they were certainly loyal.  The nobility, to a man, Jacobins.  Mack has disappeared, and no one knows the route he has taken.”  Such, it appears, was the uncertainty of the royal family of Naples, with regard to it’s fate, on the 28th, at Palermo; though, in reality, it had then been already determined.