The strength of the place, in which, when it fell, were found “seventy-seven pieces of ordnance with an incredible amount of stores,” was far superior to that estimated by the eye of Nelson, untrained as an engineer.  Not only so, but the force within the walls was very much larger than he thought, when he spoke with such confidence.  “I never yet told Lord Hood,” he wrote nearly a year later, “that after everything was fixed for the attack of Bastia, I had information given me of the enormous number of troops we had to oppose us; but my own honour, Lord Hood’s honour, and the honour of our Country must have all been sacrificed, had I mentioned what I knew; therefore you will believe what must have been my feelings during the whole siege, when I had often proposals made to me by men, now rewarded, to write to Lord Hood to raise the siege.”  “Had this been an English town,” he said immediately after the surrender, “I am sure it would not have been taken by them.  The more we see of this place, the more we are astonished at their giving it up, but the truth is, the different parties were afraid to trust each other.”  The last assertion, if correct, conveys just one of those incidents which so frequently concur to insure the success of a step rightly taken, as that of Nelson and Hood in this instance certainly was.  “Forty-five hundred men,” he continues, “have laid down their arms to under twelve hundred troops and seamen.  If proofs were wanting to show that perseverance, unanimity, and gallantry, can accomplish almost incredible things, we are an additional instance.”

“I always was of opinion,” he wrote in the exultation of reaction from the weight of responsibility he had assumed by his secrecy,—­“I always was of opinion, have ever acted up to it, and never have had any reason to repent it, that one Englishman was equal to three Frenchmen.”  This curious bit of the gasconade into which Nelson from time to time lapsed, can scarcely be accepted as a sound working theory, or as of itself justifying the risk taken; and yet it undoubtedly, under a grossly distorted form, portrays the temperament which enabled him to capture Bastia, and which made him what he was,—­a man strong enough to take great chances for adequate ends.  “All naval operations undertaken since I have been at the head of the government,” said Napoleon, “have always failed, because the admirals see double, and have learned—­where I do not know—­that war can be made without running risks.”  It is not material certainty of success, the ignis fatuus which is the great snare of the mere engineer, or of the merely accomplished soldier, that points the way to heroic achievements.  It is the vivid inspiration that enables its happy possessor, at critical moments, to see and follow the bright clear line, which, like a ray of light at midnight, shining among manifold doubtful indications, guides his steps.  Whether it leads him to success or to failure, he may not know; but that it is the path