the West Indies, they would naturally make for Cadiz or the Mediterranean.  Here is one of the many wise sayings of Napoleon:  “In business the worst thing of all is an undecided mind”; and this may be applied to any phase of human affairs.  Nelson can never be accused of indecision.  His chase to the West Indies was a masterpiece of prescience which saved the British possessions, and, but for the clumsy intelligence he received, the French would have been a hammered wreck and the projected ruse to combine it with the Rochefort squadron off Ireland blown sky-high.

The present generation of critics can only judge by the records handed down to them, and after exhaustive study we are forced to the opinion that Nelson was right in following Villeneuve to the West Indies, nor was he wrong in calculating that they were impulsively making their way back to the Mediterranean.  Consistent with his habit of never claiming the privilege of changing his mind, he followed his settled opinion and defended his convictions with vehement confidence.  He had not overlooked Ireland, but his decision came down on the side of Cadiz or Toulon, and there it had to rest, and in rather ridiculous support of his contention he imputes faulty navigation as the cause of taking them out of their course, and finding themselves united to the Rochefort squadron off Cape Finisterre.  The bad-reckoning idea cannot be sustained.  The French were no match for the British under Nelson’s piercing genius as a naval strategist, or in the flashes of dazzling enthusiasm with which he led those under his command to fight, but it must also be admitted, and has been over and over again, that Villeneuve was a skilled seaman who was not likely to allow any amateur navigators in his service, and we shall see that in the plan of defence this great French Admiral showed that he was fertile in naval skill when the time came for him to fight for existence against the greatest naval prodigy in the world.

Whatever the reason was that caused Villeneuve not to make for the Mediterranean, it certainly cannot be ascribed to lubberly navigation, and Nelson should never have tried to sustain his perfectly sound belief by seeking refuge in that untenable direction.  God bless him all the same.

On his arrival at Gibraltar on the 20th July, 1805, he set foot on shore for the first time for two years less ten days.  This in itself was a great feat of hard endurance for a man who had to carry so heavy a burden of continuous physical suffering and terrible anxiety.  Maddened and depressed often, stumbling often, falling often, but despairing never, sorrow and sadness briefly encompassed him when fate ordained disappointments.  But his heart was big with hope that he would accomplish complete victory before the sentence of death came, which he never ceased to forebode.  He was a human force, not a phenomenon.  On the 22nd July, Sir Robert Calder and Villeneuve fought a drawn or indecisive battle.  Only two Spanish