relations existing between him and his wife and Nelson.  For Mrs. Moutray the latter had formed one of those strong idealizing attachments which sprang up from time to time along his path.  “You may be certain,” he writes to his brother at the very period the discussion was pending, “I never passed English Harbour without a call, but alas!  I am not to have much comfort.  My dear, sweet friend is going home.  I am really an April day; happy on her account, but truly grieved were I only to consider myself.  Her equal I never saw in any country or in any situation.  If my dear Kate [his sister] goes to Bath next winter she will be known to her, for my dear friend promised to make herself known.  What an acquisition to any female to be acquainted with, what an example to take pattern from.”  “My sweet, amiable friend sails the 20th for England.  I took my leave of her three days ago with a heavy heart.  What a treasure of a woman.”  Returning to Antigua a few weeks later, he writes again in a sentimental vein very rare in him:  “This country appears now intolerable, my dear friend being absent.  It is barren indeed.  English Harbour I hate the sight of, and Windsor I detest.  I went once up the hill to look at the spot where I spent more happy days than in any one spot in the world.  E’en the trees drooped their heads, and the tamarind tree died:—­all was melancholy:  the road is covered with thistles; let them grow.  I shall never pull one of them up.”  His regard for this attractive woman seems to have lasted through his life; for she survived him, and to her Collingwood addressed a letter after Trafalgar, giving some particulars of Nelson’s death.  Her only son also died under the latter’s immediate command, ten years later, when serving in Corsica.

The chief interest of the dispute over Moutray’s position lies not in the somewhat obscure point involved, but in the illustration it affords of Nelson’s singular independence and tenacity in a matter of principle.  Under a conviction of right he throughout life feared no responsibility and shrank from no consequences.  It is difficult for the non-military mind to realize how great is the moral effort of disobeying a superior, whose order on the one hand covers all responsibility, and on the other entails the most serious personal and professional injury, if violated without due cause; the burden of proving which rests upon the junior.  For the latter it is, justly and necessarily, not enough that his own intentions or convictions were honest:  he has to show, not that he meant to do right, but that he actually did right, in disobeying in the particular instance.  Under no less rigorous exactions can due military subordination be maintained.  The whole bent of advantage and life-long training, therefore, draws in one direction, and is withstood by nothing, unless either strong personal character supplies a motive, or established professional standing permits a man to presume upon it, and to exercise a