Thus she persisted, keeping her beauty, and growing in mental acquirements and accomplishments, but making little apparent headway towards the great object of her ambition.  “I fear,” wrote Hamilton towards the middle of 1789, when she had been three years with him, “her views are beyond what I can bring myself to execute; and that when her hopes on that point are over, she will make herself and me unhappy.  Hitherto her behaviour is irreproachable, but her temper, as you must know, unequal.”  He underrated her perseverance, and exaggerated his own strength of reluctance, innate and acquired.  Impossible as it would seem, with his antecedents and with hers, his friends and acquaintances became alarmed for the result, and not without cause.  “Her influence over him exceeds all belief,” wrote a mutual friend to Greville in March, 1791.  “His attachment exceeds admiration, it is perfect dotage.”  Shortly after this letter was written the two went to England, and there they were married on the 6th of September, 1791.  By the end of the year they were back in Naples, and did not again leave Italy up to the time of Nelson’s arrival in 1798.

Lady Hamilton did not abuse the security of the place she had won with so much pains, nor on the other hand did her ambition and love of prominence permit her to settle down to inert enjoyment of it.  The careful self-restraint with which she had observed the proprieties of her former false position facilitated the disappearance of prejudices naturally arising from it.  Many English ladies of rank, passing through Naples, visited her, and those who refused to ignore the past of the woman, in the position of the British minister’s wife, were by some sharply criticised.  “She has had a difficult part to act,” wrote Hamilton, six months after their return, “and has succeeded wonderfully, having gained, by having no pretensions, the thorough approbation of all the English ladies.  The Queen of Naples was very kind to her on our return, and treats her like any other travelling lady of distinction; in short, we are very comfortably situated here.”  “We dined yesterday with Sir William and Lady Hamilton,” wrote Lady Malmesbury, whose husband was among the most distinguished diplomatists of the day.  “She really behaves as well as possible, and quite wonderfully, considering her origin and education.”

This last phrase, used at the culmination of Lady Hamilton’s good fortune and personal advance, was wholly good-natured; but it sums up the best of the not very good that can be said of her during the height of her prosperity, and in later years.  Although, as has been remarked, she did not at this time abuse the security which as a wife she had attained,—­for policy too clearly dictated the continuance of her previous circumspection,—­the necessity for strenuous watchfulness, exertion, and self-restraint, in order to reach a distant goal, no longer existed; and, although a woman of many amiable and generous