esteem of all with whom he was brought into contact, the young officer’s prospects were of the fairest; nor did the event belie them.  Joining the “Bristol” as her third lieutenant, not earlier than July, 1778, he had by the end of September risen “by succession”—­to use his own phrase—­to be first; a promotion by seniority whose rapidity attests the rate at which vacancies occurred.  Both Parker and his wife became very fond of him, cared for him in illness, and in later years she wrote to him upon each of the occasions on which he most brilliantly distinguished himself—­after St. Vincent, the Nile, and Copenhagen.  “Your mother,” said she after the first, “could not have heard of your deeds with more affection; nor could she be more rejoiced at your personal escape from all the dangers of that glorious day;” and again, after the Nile, “Sir Peter and I have ever regarded you as a son.”  The letter following the victory at Copenhagen has not been published; but Nelson, whose heart was never reluctant to gratitude nor to own obligation, wrote in reply:  “Believe me when I say that I am as sensible as ever that I owe my present position in life to your and good Sir Peter’s partiality for me, and friendly remembrance of Maurice Suckling.”

This last allusion indicates some disinterestedness in Parker’s patronage, and its vital importance to Nelson at that time.  Captain Suckling had died in July, 1778, and with him departed the only powerful support upon which the young lieutenant could then count, apart from his own merits and the friends obtained by them.  There was in those days an immense difference in prospects between the nephew of the Comptroller of the Navy and a man unknown at headquarters.  By what leading principles, if any, Sir Peter Parker was guided in the distribution of his favors, can scarcely now be ascertained; but that he brought rapidly forward two men of such great yet widely differing merit as Nelson and Collingwood, is a proof that his judgment was sound and the station one where vacancies were frequent.  Collingwood, who was then a lieutenant on board a sloop-of-war, went to the “Lowestoffe” in Nelson’s place.  When the latter, in December, 1778, was made commander into the brig “Badger,” the other was transferred to the vacant room in the “Bristol;” and when Nelson, on the 11th of June, 1779, became post-captain in the “Hinchinbrook” frigate, Collingwood again followed him as commander of the “Badger.”  Finally, when through a death vacancy a better frigate offered for Nelson, Collingwood also was posted into the “Hinchinbrook;” this ship thus having the singular distinction of conferring the highest rank obtainable by selection, and so fixing the final position of the two life-long friends who led the columns at Trafalgar, the crowning achievement of the British Navy as well as of their own illustrious careers.  The coincidence at the earlier date may have been partly factitious, due to a fad of the commander-in-chief; but it assumes