This explosion was indicative of bitter disappointment.  It is these outbursts of devotion to a great burning ideal that give an impulse to the world.  His anxiety when he made his landfall and was informed by scouts sent to meet him that the allied squadrons had not been heard of was intense.  It was not until then that his vigorous mind was smitten with the possibility of the French having cheated him by going to Jamaica.  Orde had been superseded by Collingwood, and was stationed off Cadiz, the purpose of which was to watch the entrance to the Mediterranean.  Nelson wrote and sent him the following letter:—­

MY DEAR COLLINGWOOD,—­I am, as you may suppose, miserable at not falling in with the enemy’s fleet; and I am almost increased in sorrow in not finding them here.  The name of General Brereton will not soon be forgot.  I must now hope that the enemy have not tricked me, and gone to Jamaica; but if the account, of which I send you a copy, is correct, it is more than probable that they are either gone to the northward, or, if bound to the Mediterranean, not yet arrived.

The vivid symptoms of disquietude in this communication to his old friend are distinctly pathetic.  In parts he is comically peevish and decidedly restrained.  He mixes his fierce wrath against the hapless General Brereton with the generalizing of essentials, and transparently holds back the crushing thoughts of misadventure for which he may be held responsible by the misanthropic, scurrilous, self-assertive experts.  His impassive periods were always associated with whimsical sensitiveness of being censured if his adventures should miscarry.  No one knew better than he that a man in his position could only be popular if he continued to succeed.  He had many critics, but always regarded them as inferior to himself, and his record justified him.  What he secretly quaked at and openly defied was a general outburst of human capriciousness.  There are veiled indications of this in his letter to Collingwood, who replied in well-reasoned terms, interwoven with that charm of tender sympathy that was so natural to him.

He says:  “I have always had the idea that Ireland was the object the French had in view,” and that he still believes that to be their destination; and then he proceeds to develop his reasons, which are a combination of practical, human, and technical inferences.  His strongest point is one that Nelson did not or could not know, though it may be argued that he ought to have foreseen; even then it is one expert’s judgment against another’s.  Collingwood affirms that the Rochefort squadron, which sailed when Villeneuve did in January, returned to Europe on the 26th May.  Collingwood maintains that the West Indian trip was to weaken the British force on the European side, and states that the return of Rochefort’s squadron confirmed him in this.  He is too generous to his mortified comrade to detract in any degree from the view that, having escaped from