who had, in himself, ever been considered as alone a host.  It was a victory the most compleatly brilliant, but never had a victory been gained which conveyed so little gladness to the hearts of the conquerors.  Every bosom felt oppressed with sorrow, on a day of such triumph to their country; and not an eye closed, in the whole fleet, on the sad night by which it was succeeded, without pouring an affectionate tribute of manly tears to the memory of the godlike hero by whose merits it had been so certainly obtained, and by whose death it had been so dearly purchased.  “He will never again lead us to conquest!” sobbed many a bursting heart.  “Our commander, our master, our father, our friend, our companion, is no more, and when shall we behold his equal?  Never, never, never!” Such was their love of the adored hero, that every virtuous individual in the fleet would gladly have lost his own life to have saved him.  It is, indeed, stated as a positive fact, that a seaman of the Victory, who was, a little before the fatal catastrophe, suffering the amputation of an arm, actually said to the surgeon—­“Well, this might, by some men, be considered as a sad misfortune; but I shall be proud of the accident, as it will make me the more resemble our brave commander in chief.”  Before the operation was finished, the sad tidings arrived below, that Lord Nelson was wounded.  The seaman, who had never once shrunk, amidst all the pain he endured, now suddenly started from his seat; and vehemently exclaimed—­“Good God!  I would rather the shot had taken off my head, and spared his precious life!”

Vice-Admiral Collingwood, in his letter to the Admiralty, describing this great victory, says—­“I have not only to lament, in common with the British navy, and the British nation, in the fall of the commander in chief, the loss of a hero, whose name will be immortal, and his memory ever dear to his country; but my heart is rent with the most poignant grief for the death of a friend, to whom, by many years intimacy, and a perfect knowledge of the virtues of his mind, which inspired ideas superior to the common race of men, I was bound by the strongest ties of affection:  a grief, to which even the glorious occasion on which he fell, does not bring the consolation which, perhaps, it ought!”

When the dispatches, containing an account of the glorious victory off Cape Trafalgar, with the death of our chief hero, arrived in England, and were perused by his majesty, the king was greatly affected.  Tears flowed from the royal eyes; and his majesty pathetically exclaimed—­“We have lost more than we have gained!” They were read, at Windsor, by the queen, to the assembled princesses, and the whole royal group most affectionately wept the fall of the hero.  His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, with a dignified excess of grief, most acutely felt the loss of the heroic supporter of his father’s house; and a private letter of condolence, which his royal highness wrote to Alexander Davison, Esq. on