when it became known to his father, had bitterly displeased the latter, and accentuated the breach between them.  At a banquet given by the Spanish ambassador in celebration of the King’s recovery, the three princes sat at a table separate from the rest of the royal family.  A formal reconciliation took place in September, 1789; but the Duke of Clarence, as he had then become, continued attached to the Prince of Wales’s clique.  Those who know how party considerations influenced naval appointments at that time, will in these facts find at least a partial explanation of the cloud which then hung over Nelson.

Lord Chatham, brother of the minister to whom Prince William was not a friend, became head of the Admiralty in July, 1788, and so remained until after the war with France began in 1793.  With him was associated Lord Hood, between whom and Nelson there arose what the latter called “a difference of opinion,” which led to a cessation of “familiar correspondence.”  The exact date at which this occurred does not appear, but it was probably before May, 1790; for Hood refused to use his influence to get Nelson a ship, in the armament which was then ordered on account of a difficulty with Spain, whereas eighteen months before he had assured him that in case of hostilities he need not fear not having a good ship.  This refusal was the more marked, because “almost the whole service was then called out.”  On the same occasion, Nelson wrote, “he made a speech never to be effaced from my memory, viz.:  that the King was impressed with an unfavourable opinion of me.”  Knowing Nelson’s value as an officer as well as Hood did, there can scarcely remain a doubt that some serious indiscretion, real or imagined, must have caused this alienation; but of what it was there is no trace, unless in his evident siding with the prince, who was then out of favor with both the King and the administration.

The five years—­from 1788 to 1792 inclusive—­intervening between the cruise of the “Boreas” and the outbreak of war with the French Republic, were thus marked by a variety of unpleasant circumstances, of which the most disagreeable, to a man of Nelson’s active temperament, was the apparently fixed resolve of the authorities to deny him employment.  He was harassed, indeed, by the recurring threats of prosecution for the West India seizures; but both the Admiralty and the Treasury agreed that he should be defended at the expense of the Crown,—­a fact which tends to show that his subsequent disfavor arose from some other cause than disapproval of his official action, however some incidents may have been misrepresented.  On its private side, his life during this period seems to have been happy, though uneventful; but in the failure of children he was deprived, both then and afterwards, of that sweetest of interests, continuous yet ever new in its gradual unfolding, which brings to the most monotonous existence its daily tribute of novelty and incident.  The fond, almost rapturous, expressions with which he greeted the daughter afterwards born to him out of wedlock, shows the blank in his home,—­none the less real because not consciously realized.