as “a wicked shameless woman, who had violated all that men held most sacred.”  She had ceased to reign, and by her crimes she had fulfilled her destiny.  Collingwood, who knew her public and private character to be notoriously untrustworthy and loose, looked upon the proposed honour from such a person as an affront, and refused to accept it if offered.  Nelson, on the other hand, who had a passion for window-dressing and flattery, accepted with a flowing heart both a Dukedom and an estate from their Sicilian Majesties.  His close intimacy with the Royal Family, and especially with the Queen, was a perpetual anxiety to his loyal and devoted friends.

There were no two men in the Service who had such an affectionate regard for each other as Nelson and the amiable Northumbrian Admiral, and certainly none equalled them in their profession or in their devotion to their King and country.  Each was different from the other in temperament and character, but both were alike in superb heroism—­the one, egotistically untamed, revelling at intervals in lightning flashes of eternal vengeance on the French fleet when the good fortune of meeting them should come; and the other, with calm reticence elaborating his plans and waiting patiently for his chance to take part in the challenge that was to decide the dominion of the sea.  Each, in fact, rivalled in being a spirit to the other.  Nelson believed, and frequently said, that he “wished to appear as a godsend”; while Collingwood, in more humble and piercing phrase, remarked that “while it is England, let me keep my place in the forefront of the battle.”  The sound of the names of these two remarkable men is like an echo from other far-off days.  Both believed that God was on their side.

Neither of them knew the character or purpose of the exalted man on whom their Government was making war.  Like simple-minded, brave sailors as they were, knowing nothing of the mysteries of political jealousies and intrigue, and believing that the men constituting the Government must be of high mental and administrative ability, they assumed that they were carrying out a flawless patriotic duty, never doubting the wisdom of it; and it was well for England that they did not.  Men always fight better when they know and believe their cause is just.

Collingwood, like most of his class, gave little thought to money matters.  He had “no ambition,” he says, “to possess riches,” but he had to being recognized in a proper way.  He wished the succession of his title to be conferred on his daughters, as he had no son.  This was a modest and very natural desire, considering what the nation owed to him, but it was not granted, and the shame of it can never be redeemed.  In one of his letters to Mr. Blackett he says to him, “I was exceedingly displeased at some of the language held in the House of Commons on the settlement of the pension upon my daughters; it was not of my asking, and if I had a favour to ask, money would be the last thing I would beg from an impoverished country.  I am not a Jew, whose god is gold; nor a Swiss, whose services are to be counted against so much money.  I have motives for my conduct which I would not give in exchange for a hundred pensions.”