of excellence, arising from his tendency to idealize, that colored the medium through which he invariably saw the men whom he himself commanded.  The disposition to invest those near to him with merits, which must in part at least have been imaginary, is a most noteworthy feature of his character, and goes far to explain the attraction he exerted over others, the enthusiasm which ever followed him, the greatness of his success, and also, unhappily, the otherwise almost inexplicable but enduring infatuation which enslaved his later years, and has left the most serious blot upon his memory.

Though thus pleased with his surroundings, his own health continued indifferent.  He excuses himself for delay in correspondence, because “so ill as to be scarce kept out of bed.”  In such a state, and for one whose frame had been racked and weakened by three years spent in the damp heat of the tropics, a winter’s trip to the Baltic was hardly the best prescription; but thither the “Albemarle” was sent,—­“it would almost be supposed,” he wrote, “to try my constitution.”  He was away on this cruise from October to December, 1781, reaching Yarmouth on the 17th of the latter month, with a large convoy of a hundred and ten sail of merchant-ships, all that then remained of two hundred and sixty that had started from Elsinore on the 8th.  “They behaved, as all convoys that ever I saw did, shamefully ill; parting company every day.”  After being several days wind-bound in Yarmouth Roads, he arrived in the Downs on the first day of 1782.  The bitter cold of the North had pierced him almost as keenly as it did twenty years later in the Copenhagen expedition.  “I believe the Doctor has saved my life since I saw you,” he wrote to his brother.  The ship was then ordered to Portsmouth to take in eight months’ provisions,—­a sure indication that she was intended for a distant voyage.  Nelson himself surmised that she would join the squadron of Sir Richard Bickerton, then fitting out to reinforce the fleet in the East Indies.  Had this happened, he would have been on hand to hear much and perchance see something of one of his own professional forerunners, the great French Admiral Suffren, as well as of the latter’s doughty antagonist, Sir Edward Hughes; for Bickerton arrived in time to take part in the last of the five pitched battles between those two hard fighters.  Unluckily, a severe accident had befallen the “Albemarle,”—­a large East Indiaman having dragged down upon her during a heavy gale in the Downs.  The injuries received by this collision were so extensive that the ship was under repairs at Portsmouth for six weeks, during which time Bickerton sailed.