‘We have had here,’ he writes, ‘some shocks of an earthquake which, in Calabria Ultra, has swallowed up or destroyed almost every town, together with some towns in Sicily.... Every hour brings in accounts of fresh disasters. [Sidenote: 1783. Feb. 18.] Some thousands of people will perish with hunger before the provisions sent from hence can reach them. This, I believe, will prove to have been the greatest calamity that has happened in this century. An end is put to the Carnival. [Sidenote: Hamilton to Banks, MS. ADDIT., 8967, ff. 34, seqq.] The theatres are shut. I suppose Saint Januarius will be brought out.’ There had been no exaggeration in these first reports. It was found that at Terranova, not only were all the buildings destroyed, but the very ground on which they stood sunk to such a depth as to form a sort of gulf. In that district alone 3043 people lost their lives. At Seminara 1328 persons were buried beneath the ruins. In other and adjacent districts more than 3300 persons perished. In 1784 the ambassador visited England. His stay was brief. But an incident which occurred during this visit gave its colour to the rest of his life. In 1791 Sir William HAMILTON was made a Privy Councillor, and in the same year (nine years after the death of his first wife) he married Emma HARTE, whom he had first met in the house of his nephew, Colonel GREVILLE, in 1784. In September, 1793, his eventful acquaintance with NELSON was formed. [Sidenote: HAMILTON’S FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH NELSON.] In that month, NELSON had been sent to Naples with despatches from Admiral Lord HOOD, in which Sir William HAMILTON was pressed to procure the sending of some Neapolitan troops to Toulon. After his first interview with Lord HOOD’S messenger, he is said to have remarked to his wife: ‘I have a little man to introduce to you who will become one of the greatest men England has ever had.’ The favourable impression was reciprocal, it seems. The ambassador gave such good furtherance to the object of NELSON’S mission, that the messenger, we are told, said to him, ‘You are a man after my heart. [Sidenote: Clarke and McArthur, _Life, &c., of Nelson_, vol. i, p. 133; and Nicolas, vol. i, p. 326.] I’m only a captain, but, if I live, I shall get to the top of the tree;’ while, of the too-fascinating lady into whose social circle he was presently brought, NELSON wrote to his wife, ‘She is a young woman of amiable manners, who does honour to the station to which she is raised.’ Several years, however, were yet to intervene before the events of the naval war and the political circumstances of Naples itself brought about a close connexion in public transactions between the great seaman and the British ambassador, whose long diplomatic career was drawing to its close.