I can hardly tell what is the matter with it.  From the shoulder to my fingers’ ends are as if half dead.”  He remained in Bath until the middle of March, latterly more for the mild climate than because feeling the necessity of prosecuting his cure; yet that his health was far from securely re-established is evident, for a severe relapse followed his return to London.  On the 7th of May, 1781, he writes to his brother:  “You will say, why does not he come into Norfolk?  I will tell you:  I have entirely lost the use of my left arm, and very near of my left leg and thigh.”  In estimating Nelson’s heroism, the sickly fragility of his bodily frame must be kept in memory; not to excuse shortcomings of nerve or enterprise, for there were none, but to exalt duly the extraordinary mental energy which rather mocked at difficulties than triumphed over them.

While yet an invalid he had again applied for employment, and, as the war was still raging, was appointed in August, 1781, to the “Albemarle,” a small frigate of twenty-eight guns.  He was pleased with the ship, the first commissioned by himself at home, with a long cruise in prospect; and, together with his expressions of content with her, there appears that manifestation of complete satisfaction with his officers and crew, with those surrounding him as subordinates, that so singularly characterized his habit of mind.  “I have an exceeding good ship’s company.  Not a man or officer in her I would wish to change....  I am perfectly satisfied with both officers and ship’s company.”  Down to the month before Trafalgar, when, to the bidding of the First Lord of the Admiralty to choose his own officers, he replied, “Choose yourself, my lord; the same spirit actuates the whole profession, you cannot choose wrong,” there is rarely, it might almost be said never, anything but praise for those beneath him.  With the “Agamemnon,” “We are all well; indeed, nobody can be ill with my ship’s company, they are so fine a set.”  At the Nile, “I had the happiness to command a band of brothers; therefore night was to my advantage.  Each knew his duty, and I was sure each would feel for a French ship. My friends readily conceived my plan.”  His ships in the Mediterranean, in 1803, “are the best commanded and the very best manned” in the navy.  So his frequent praise of others in his despatches and letters has none of the formal, perfunctory ring of an official paper; it springs evidently from the warmest appreciation and admiration, is heartfelt, showing no deceptive exterior, but the true native fibre of the man, full of the charity which is kind and thinketh no evil.  It was not always so toward those above him.  Under the timid and dilatory action of Hotham and Hyde Parker, under the somewhat commonplace although exact and energetic movements of Lord Keith, he was restive, and freely showed what he felt.  On the other hand, around Hood and Jervis, who commanded his professional respect and esteem, he quickly threw the same halo