for the country’s good.  It might be a gain to borrow his spirit for a while at the present time to electrify the British Admiralty.  Nelson was more successful in his conflicts with the enemy than with the chiefs of his calling afloat and ashore.  He was not really strong and audacious enough in his dealings with them.  “Jacky Fisher” (as he is fondly called) who lives in our disturbed time, would have had similar sandbags jettisoned in quick time.  The modern Nelson has had his troubles with inferior superiors too, but he flattened out some of them.  The modern man is all business, and does not show vanity if he has any.  The “Only Nelson” was strong, weak, and vain.  If no one else gratuitously sounded his praises, he would do so himself in the most comical way, not altogether in public, but to “Santa Emma,” whose function it was to spread them abroad.

After the battle of Copenhagen, Sir Hyde Parker sailed for Carlscrona, and left Nelson to hoist his flag as commander-in-chief on the St. George, which was not ready, and was possibly being refitted after rough handling.  He tells Emma of Parker’s departure, and adds, “if there is any work to do,” i.e. any fighting, “he is pretty certain they will wait for him” before commencing it.  And then he adds, “Nelson will be first.  Who can stop him?” On the eve of the battle of Copenhagen he wrote to her, “Before you receive this, all will be over with Denmark.  Either your Nelson will be safe, and Sir Hyde Parker victor, or your own Nelson will be laid low.”  What deep and genuine love-lunacy to be found in a terrific warrior, whose very name terrified those who had the honour to fight against him!  The incongruity of it baffles one’s belief, and seems to reverse the very order of human construction.  In matters concerning his profession and highly technical State affairs there was no more astute man, but as soon as his thoughts centre on this female nightmare, he loses control of his wonderful gifts, and his mind becomes deranged with the idea of her being an object on which he should bestow reverence and infinite adulation.  If ever there was a creature of lamentable contradictions, surely it was this genius, who immortalized our national glory at the Nile, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar!  That a man of his calibre, surrounded with eternal fame, should be inflamed with a passion for a woman of negative morals who was refused admittance to the same circle that, but for this attachment would receive him as their triumphant hero, is an example of human eccentricity that never has and never can be accounted for.  It may be taken for granted that at the very time he was writing to her about “her own Nelson” she would be carrying on a love intrigue with some old or new acquaintance, possibly the Prince of Wales, whom as I have said, her gallant lover wished her to avoid.  He was known to be a cheat, a liar, and a faithless friend to men and to women, while in accordance with the splendid ethic of this type of person, he believed himself to be possessed of every saintly virtue.  But any one who is curious to have a fascinating description of the “little dapper” should consult Thackeray.