The Queen finally resolved to continue her journey, but the victories of the French introduced into the political future an element of uncertainty, which caused her to delay a month in Leghorn, undecided whether to go by sea or land; and Nelson had vowed not to forsake her.  Keith, after some days, relented so far as to authorize the “Alexander” taking the royal family to Trieste, but many of the party were averse to the sea voyage.  There had been for some time living with the Hamiltons a Miss Knight, an English lady already in middle life, whose journal gives the chief particulars that have been preserved of this period.  “The Queen,” she wrote, “wishes, if possible, to prosecute her journey.  Lady Hamilton cannot bear the thought of going by sea; and therefore nothing but impracticability will prevent our going to Vienna.”  When it was at last fixed, after many vacillations, that they should go to Ancona, and there take small Austrian vessels for Trieste, she exclaims, “to avoid the danger of being on board an English man-of-war, where everything is commodious, and equally well arranged for defence and comfort!  But the die is cast, and go we must.”  She mentions that Lord Nelson was well, and kept up his spirits amazingly, but Sir William appeared broken, distressed, and harassed.

On the 11th the travellers started for Florence, passing within two miles of the French advanced posts.  At Ancona they embarked on board some Russian frigates, and in them reached Trieste safely on the 2d of August.  Nelson was received with acclamations in all the towns of the Pope’s states.  A party in which were not only the queen of a reigning sovereign, but an English minister and his wife, was sure of receiving attention wherever it passed or stopped; but in the present case it was the naval officer who carried off the lion’s share of homage, so widely had his fame spread throughout the Continent.  At Trieste, says Miss Knight, “he is followed by thousands when he goes out, and for the illumination which is to take place this evening, there are many Viva Nelsons prepared.”

The same enthusiasm was shown at Vienna, where they arrived on the 21st or 22d of August.  “You can have no notion of the anxiety and curiosity to see him,” wrote Lady Minto.[9] “The door of his house is always crowded with people, and even the street when his carriage is at the door; and when he went to the play he was applauded, a thing which rarely happens here.”  “Whenever he appeared in public,” records Miss Knight, “a crowd was collected, and his portrait was hung up as a sign over many shops—­even the milliners giving his name to particular dresses, but it did not appear to me that the English nation was at all popular.”  At a dinner at Prince Esterhazy’s, where he spent some days, his health was drunk with a flourish of trumpets and firing of cannon.  “I don’t think him altered in the least,” continued Lady Minto, who remembered him from the old days in Corsica.  “He has the same shock