The intellectual endowment of genius was Nelson’s from the first; but from the circumstances of his life it was denied the privilege of early manifestation, such as was permitted to Napoleon.  It is, consequently, not so much this as the constant exhibition of moral power, force of character, which gives continuity to his professional career, and brings the successive stages of his advance, in achievement and reputation, from first to last, into the close relation of steady development, subject to no variation save that of healthy and vigorous growth, till he stood unique—­above all competition.  This it was—­not, doubtless, to the exclusion of that reputation for having a head, upon which he justly prided himself—­which had already fixed the eyes of his superiors upon him as the one officer, not yet indeed fully tested, most likely to cope with the difficulties of any emergency.  In the display of this, in its many self-revelations,—­in concentration of purpose, untiring energy, fearlessness of responsibility, judgment sound and instant, boundless audacity, promptness, intrepidity, and endurance beyond all proof,—­the restricted field of Corsica and the Riviera, the subordinate position at Cape St. Vincent, the failure of Teneriffe, had in their measure been as fruitful as the Nile was soon to be, and fell naught behind the bloody harvests of Copenhagen and Trafalgar.  Men have been disposed, therefore, to reckon this moral energy—­call it courage, dash, resolution, what you will—­as Nelson’s one and only great quality.  It was the greatest, as it is in all successful men of action; but to ignore that this mighty motive force was guided by singularly clear and accurate perceptions, upon which also it consciously rested with a firmness of faith that constituted much of its power, is to rob him of a great part of his due renown.

But it was not only in the greatness of the opportunities offered to Nelson that external conditions now changed.  The glory of the hero brought a temptation which wrecked the happiness of the man.  The loss of serenity, the dark evidences of inward conflict, of yielding against conviction, of consequent dissatisfaction with self and gradual deterioration, make between his past and future a break as clear, and far sharper than, the startling increase of radiancy that attends the Battle of the Nile, and thenceforth shines with undiminished intensity to the end.  The lustre of his well-deserved and world-wide renown, the consistency and ever-rising merit of his professional conduct, contrast painfully with the shadows of reprobation, the swerving, and the declension, which begin to attend a life heretofore conformed, in the general, to healthy normal standards of right and wrong, but now allowed to violate, not merely ideal Christian rectitude, but the simple, natural dictates of upright dealing between man and man.  It had been the proud boast of early years:  “There is no action in my whole life but what is honourable.”  The attainment of glory