It is remarkable that, the very day of Sir William's death, Captain Macnamara, Lord Nelson's old fellow-traveller when he visited France the latter end of the year 1783, killed Colonel Montgomery, and was himself shot through the left side by his antagonist, in a duel near Primrose Hill, Hampstead. They had been riding in Hyde Park, that morning, with each a Newfoundland dog; in whose first quarrelling and fighting, originated the dispute which so fatally terminated in the evening. Captain Macnamara was tried at the Old Bailey, on the 22d of the same month; but Lord Nelson, as well as his friends Lord Minto, Lord Hood, and Lord Hotham, giving him a most excellent character, though Judge Heath directed the jury to find a verdict of manslaughter, both from the evidence and the captain's own admission, they resolutely pronounced him--"Not guilty!" Lord Nelson had not, now, been quite eighteen months at home; and, within less than the twelve last, his ardent hopes of a tranquil retirement with the friends he loved, had been twice cruelly chilled by the hand of death. Having lost the best of fathers, and the best of friends, with whom he was solicitous to have enjoyed his enlarged domains at Merton, before the incivility of a rude rustic, and the procrastinating formalities of legal conveyance, would permit him to possess the requisite additions for it's improvement. Indeed, without the aid of Sir William's income, the establishment at Merton Place, was already too great for Lord Nelson's slender fortune. It suited well enough their joint means, but was not adapted, individually, for either. However, even the possession of the whole had scarcely been obtained, and not at all occupied, when it was rendered useless to the hero; for, a renewal of the war being now inevitable, his transcendent abilities were instantly called for by the united voice of the nation. On the 16th of May, little more than five weeks after the decease of his revered and regretted friend Sir William Hamilton, a message from his majesty announced to both houses of parliament the necessity for immediate war with France: and, the very next day, Lord Nelson, who had accepted the command of the Mediterranean fleet, departed for Portsmouth; from whence he sailed for Gibraltar, the day following, in the Amphion frigate, accompanied by the Victory of a hundred and ten guns, his lordship's flag-ship.