receiving frequent reports of the preparations of the French fleet in Toulon, was impatient to have the siege pushed, and thought the army dilatory.  “The rapidity with which the French are getting on at Toulon,” he wrote confidentially to Nelson, “makes it indispensably necessary for me to put the whole of the fleet under my command in the best possible state for service; and I must soon apply to the general for those parts of the regiments now on shore, ordered by his Majesty to serve in lieu of marines, to be held in readiness to embark at the shortest notice.  I shall delay this application as long as possible.”

Nelson, being a seaman, sympathized of course with his own service, and with Hood, for whom he had most cordial admiration, both personal and professional.  But at the same time he was on the spot, a constant eye-witness to the difficulties of the siege, a clear-headed observer, with sound military instincts, and fair-minded when facts were before him.  The army, he wrote to Hood, is harassed to death, and he notices that it suffers from sickness far more than do the seamen.  He repeats the request for more seamen, and, although he seems to doubt the reasonableness of the demand, evidently thinks that they should be furnished, if possible.  Hood accordingly sent an additional detachment of three hundred, raising the number on shore to the five hundred suggested by Moore.  “I had much rather,” he wrote, “that a hundred seamen should be landed unnecessarily, than that one should be kept back that was judged necessary.”  On the other hand, when the general, after a work bearing on the bay had been destroyed, suggests that the navy might help, by laying the ships against the walls, Nelson takes “the liberty of observing that the business of laying wood before walls was much altered of late,” and adds the common-sense remark, that “the quantity of powder and shot which would be fired away on such an attack could be much better directed from a battery on shore.”  This conversation took place immediately after all the outworks had been reduced.  It was conducted “with the greatest politeness,” he writes, and “the General thanked me for my assistance, but it was necessary to come to the point whether the siege should be persevered in or given up.  If the former, he must be supplied with the means, which were more troops, more seamen to work, and more ammunition.”  Nelson replied that, if the requisite means could not be had on the spot, they could at least hold on where they were till supplied from elsewhere.

It will be noticed that Nelson was practically the intermediary between the two commanders-in-chief.  In fact, there appears to have been between them some constraint, and he was at times asked to transmit a message which he thought had better go direct.  In this particularly delicate situation, one cannot but be impressed with the tact he for the most part shows, the diplomatic ability, which was freely attributed