on the seductive Emma, whose story, retold by Mr. Harrison, shows
Lady Nelson to have been an impossible woman to live with. She made
home hell to him, so he said. And making liberal allowance for Emma's
fibbing propensities, there are positive evidences that her story of
Nelson's home life was crammed with pathetic truths of domestic
misery. Nelson corroborates this by a letter to Emma almost
immediately after his wife's ludicrous exit. The letter is the
outpouring of an embittered soul that had been freed from purgatory
and was entering into a new joy. It is a sickening effusion of
unrestrained love-making that would put any personage of penny-novel
fame to the blush. I may as well give the full dose. Here it is:--

Now, my own dear wife: for such you are in the sight of Heaven,
I can give full scope to my feelings, for I dare say Oliver will
faithfully deliver this letter. You know, my dearest Emma, that
there is nothing in this world that I would not do for us to
live together, and to have our dear little child with us. I
firmly believe that this campaign will give us peace, and then
we will set off for Bronte. In twelve hours we shall be across
the water, and freed from all the nonsense of his friends, or
rather pretended ones. Nothing but an event happening to him
could prevent my going; and I am sure you will think so, for,
unless all matters accord, it would bring a hundred of tongues
and slanderous reports if I separated from her, which I would do
with pleasure the moment we can be united. I want to see her no
more; therefore we must manage till we can quit this country, or
your uncle dies. I love you: I never did love any one else. I
never had a dear pledge of love till you gave me one; and you,
thank my God, never gave one to anybody else. I think before
March is out, you will either see us back, or so victorious that