ten years on to his life.”  Poor Nelson was very sensitive when his professional qualities were assailed.  He thought, and thought rightly, that the blockade at Toulon was an unparalleled feat of human patience and physical endurance.  He had only been out of his ship three times from May 1803 to August 1805.  We may write and speak about this wonderful devotion to duty, but it is only if we take time to think of the terrific things which the central figure who commanded, and the crews of the fleet of rickety, worn-out, leaky baskets—­proudly spoken of as the “wooden walls of Old England”—­had to contend with and actually did, that we comprehend the vast strain and task of it all.  It was because Nelson was ever being reminded by some clumsy act of the Admiralty or thoughtless, ignorant criticism on the part of the politicians and civilian public generally that the work he and the men under him were doing was not appreciated as it should be, that he gave way to outbursts of violent resentment.  But so far as the present writer has been able to discover, his love of approbation was so strong that an encouraging word of praise soon put him in love for the time being with those whom he had lately cursed.

He never shrank from disobeying the instructions of whatever authority was over him if his judgment led him to the conclusion that he would serve his country better by disobedience and by following his own judgment; whenever he was driven to do this he was right and those above him were wrong, and in each case he was so conclusively right that no authoritative power dare court-martial him, or even censure his conduct, since the public believed more in him than in them.  When the spirit of well-balanced defiance was upon him, he seemed to say to the public, to himself, and to those who were responsible for his instructions, “Do you imagine yourselves more capable of judging the circumstances, and the immeasurable difficulties surrounding them, than I am, whose business it has been to watch minutely every changing phase?  Or do you think my love of country or glory so incomparably inferior to yours that I would risk any harm coming to it, or to myself and the men under me, if I was not sure of my ground?  For what other reason do you think I disobeyed orders?  Do you suppose I did it in order that some disaster should be the result?  Or do you still think that your plan, right or wrong, should have been carried out, even though it would be accompanied with appalling consequences to life and property?  If these are your views, I wish to remind you that I am the Indomitable Nelson, who will stand no damned nonsense from you or from the enemy when I see that my country, or the interests that I represent, are going to be jeopardized by your self-assertive instructions, and I wish to intimate to you that there is only one way of dealing with a Frenchman, and that is to knock him down when he is an enemy.  You have obviously got to learn that to be civil to a Frenchman is to be laughed at,