board, to enable them to dispose of them.

In the letter to Mr. Windham above quoted, his lordship says, alluding
to the cruelties of the French, who were then over-running Italy--"Your
excellency's account of the treatment of his Royal Highness the Grand
Duke, of the King of Sardinia, and of the poor old Pope, makes my heart
bleed; and I curse, in the bitterness of my grief, all those who might
have prevented such cruelties!"

It will be recollected, that the venerable Pope Pius VI, who had been
seized and carried off by the French, and whose fate Lord Nelson thus
feelingly commiserates, as if anticipatory of the event, was at the
period of being thus forced from Rome in his eighty-second year; and
that his holiness expired, at Valence, on the 19th of August following,
after a captivity of six months: his body being consumed, by unslacked
lime thrown into the grave, to prevent it's receiving, at any future
period, the honours which might be esteemed due to a modern martyr; who,
perhaps, possessed equal piety and resignation, with many holy sufferers
of ancient times, for a like rigid adherence to the Christian religion,
who have been canonized by the Roman Catholic church.

On the last day of February, the 28th, Lord Nelson sent instructions to
his friend Captain Ball, at Malta, to preside over the meetings of the
Maltese people: their deputies having represented to Sir William
Hamilton and his lordship, that he had, by his address, frequently
united the jarring interests of the different chiefs, at their
distracted councils, and that they were therefore desirous of his future
assistance; which was, also, the wish of his Sicilian Majesty. Captain
Ball, therefore, was vested with full power to leave his ship in charge
of the first-lieutenant, directing him how to proceed, and to be on