422 HAMILTON which she created a great sensation. Among her many conquests she soon made that of Charles Greville, of the ancient family of War- wick. By him she had three children, and fas- cinated him to such a degree that he deter- mined to marry her, and would have done so but for the opposition of his uncle, Sir William Hamilton. But so soon as the latter beheld her, he in turn was fascinated. A contract was now made between uncle and nephew by which it was agreed that Emma should be trans- ferred to the former, and that he should pay the debts of his nephew. At first his mistress, she soon blinded her new lover so completely as to become his wife, and was presented as such by him to Queen Caroline of Naples in 1791, by whom she was received into intimacy and confidence. Her extraordinary talents for political as well as personal intrigue here found a wide field for action. She soon formed an illicit connection with Lord Nelson, which her husband for expediency's sake tacitly encour- aged. At this time the kingdom of Naples was critically situated, a French invasion being dreaded, while on the other hand fears were entertained lest England should ruin its trade. Charles IV. of Spain having written to his bro- ther, the king of Naples, violently accusing the English, this letter was shown by the queen to Lady Hamilton, by whom it was sent to the British cabinet. The result was that England attacked the Spaniards, and a vast loss of lives and of treasure to the latter was caused by the violated confidence. In 1798 the arrival of the French suddenly interrupted the festiv- ities in honor of Nelson's victory at Aboukir. A panic ensued, and the royal family, with Sir William and Lady Hamilton, took refuge in Nelson's ship, which conveyed them to Pa- lermo. When the court returned to Naples, merciless vengeance was taken on revolution- ists and liberals, and of this Lady Hamilton availed herself to punish personal enemies. Nelson's violent measures, contrary to the articles of capitulation, having been incited by her. Having returned with her husband to England, Lady Hamilton found herself generally despised on account of her rela- tion to Nelson, who had resigned his com- mand to enjoy her society. In England she gave birth to a daughter, whom she named Horatia Nelson, and resided at a country seat which Nelson had given her. After the death of her husband, and especially after that of Nelson in 1805, she was destitute, and left England for France, where she died in want and misery. Her daughter Horatia married a poor clergyman, and some funds were raised by subscription for the benefit of their children. HAMILTON, Sir William, a Scottish philoso- pher, born in Glasgow, March 8, 1788, died in Edinburgh, May 6, 1856. At the university of Glasgow he took a high position in the classes, and carried off the first prizes in phi- losophy. From Glasgow he went to Balliol college, Oxford, where candidates for honors were required to profess a certain number of books in history, poetry, and science. In going up for his degree, he not only took with him into the schools far more than the usual aver- age of books in poetry and history, but in science he professed all the works extant in Greek and Roman philosophy, including the whole of Aristotle and all the works of his earlier commentators, all of Plato, the Neo- Platonists, Proclus, and Plotinus, and the frag- ments of the earlier and later philosophical doctrines preserved by Laertius, Stobasus, and the other collectors. His examination in phi- losophy occupied two days, running through six hours each day. In 14 of his books on Greek philosophy he was not questioned, the greater part of these being declared by the masters to be too abstrusely metaphysical for examination. At this time also he had studied the earlier modern philosophers and become interested in the speculations of contemporary metaphysicians on the continent. He was ad- mitted to the bar at Edinburgh in 1813, and began to practise as an advocate ; but his time was given more to philosophical studies than to his profession. In 1816 he established his claim to a dormant baronetcy. In 1820 he was a candidate for the chair of moral philoso- phy in the university of Edinburgh ; but his competitor John Wilson, being a tory, was elected. In 1821, by appointment of the fac- ulty of advocates, Hamilton delivered in the university a short course of lectures on the character and history of the classic nations of antiquity. At this tune phrenology was ex- citing especial interest in Edinburgh. For the purpose of testing its pretensions Sir William went through a laborious course of compara- tive anatomy, dissecting with his own hands several hundred different brains. He sawed open a series of skulls of different nations, of both sexes and all ages, to ascertain the facts in regard to the frontal sinus on which the phrenologists had founded so much. He also instituted a series of experiments for ascer- taining the relative size and weight of brains. The results of these investigations were em- bodied in two papers which he read before the royal society of Edinburgh in 1826, main- taining that the assertions of fact by the phrenologists were utterly false. In 1829 he contributed to the "Edinburgh Review" a powerful article against the German doctrine of human omniscience, as set forth after Schel- ling and Hegel, though in modified form, in the lectures of Victor Cousin. This was followed by other contributions to the same review, two of which are particularly celebrated, " On the Philosophy of Perception" and "On Recent Publications in Logical Science." Many of these articles were translated into foreign lan- guages, and in 1852 all of them were published collectively, edited by their author with notes and appendices, under the title "Discussions in Philosophy and Literature, Education, and University Reform " (enlarged ed., 1854 ; re-
