Again and again he asked for employment. The prince recommended him to Lord Chatham, but nothing was done. In December, 1792, Nelson wrote, "If your lordships should be pleased to appoint me to a _cockle-boat_ I should be grateful." He would have left the service, if he had had means to live on shore. He was irritated beyond measure by this neglect, and perhaps Mrs. Nelson did not find the parsonage a perfect haven of rest and peace. Finally Nelson concluded to take refuge in France. That country had become a republic Sept. 21, 1792. She soon found herself, on account of her democratic principles, engaged in war with various countries, Great Britain among them. Feb. 1, 1793, she declared war against England, Holland, and Spain. Sardinia was already at war with France. As soon as England was involved in war, Nelson was needed; and he was assigned to the Agamemnon, a fine ship of sixty-four guns, called by the seamen, "Old Eggs-and-Bacon." She sailed for Gibraltar June 27, 1793, with Lord Hood's fleet, nineteen sail-of-the-line, and a convoy of merchant-ships. When Lord Hood arrived in the Mediterranean, he stationed his ships off Toulon, which soon surrendered to the British, without firing a shot. Nelson was at once ordered to Naples with despatches for Sir William Hamilton, the British minister, and to ask for ten thousand Italian troops, to help in the preservation of Toulon. King Ferdinand and his queen, Maria Caroline, the daughter of Maria Theresa of Austria, gave Nelson most cordial welcome at Court, feeling that the English were "the saviours of Italy." Sir William Hamilton told his wife that he was going to introduce her to a little man, not handsome, "but an English naval officer, who will become the greatest man that England ever produced. I know it from the few words I have already exchanged with him. I pronounce that he will one day astonish the world.... Let him be put in the room prepared for Prince Augustus." Lady Hamilton received Nelson with her accustomed grace and cordiality. He wrote his wife, "She is a young woman of amiable manners, and who does honor to the station in which she is raised.... She has been wonderfully kind and good to Josiah." Nelson was at this time about thirty-five, and Lady Hamilton five years younger, of the same age as his wife. She was a woman of remarkable beauty and great sweetness of manner. Southey said, "She was a woman whose personal accomplishments have seldom been equalled, and whose powers of mind were not less fascinating than her person." Her history had been a strange one. Born in extreme poverty, and early left an orphan by the death of her father, she was for some years a nursery-maid and servant, then a model for Romney, the famous artist, who painted her twenty-three times, as Bacchante, Saint Cecilia, a Magdalen, a Wood Nymph, Joan of Arc, etc., and thought her the most beautiful human being he had ever looked upon.