some place or other—­I, only I, am without reward....  Nothing but my anxious endeavour to serve my Country makes me bear up against it; but I sometimes am ready to give all up.”  “Forgive this letter,” he adds towards the end:  “I have said a great deal too much of myself; but indeed it is all too true.”  In similar strain he expressed himself to his wife:  “It is very true that I have ever served faithfully, and ever has it been my fate to be neglected; but that shall not make me inattentive to my duty.  I have pride in doing my duty well, and a self-approbation, which if it is not so lucrative, yet perhaps affords more pleasing sensations.”  Thus the consciousness of duty done in the past, and the clear recognition of what duty still demanded in the present and future, stood him in full stead, when he failed to receive at the hands of others the honor he felt to be his due, and which, he never wearied in proclaiming, was in his eyes priceless, above all other reward.  “Corsica, in respect of prizes,” he wrote to Mrs. Nelson, “produces nothing but honour, far above the consideration of wealth:  not that I despise riches, quite the contrary, yet I would not sacrifice a good name to obtain them.  Had I attended less than I have done to the service of my Country, I might have made some money too:  however, I trust my name will stand on record, when the money-makers will be forgot,”—­a hope to be abundantly fulfilled.

At the moment Bastia fell there arrived from England a new commander-in-chief for the land forces, General Stuart, an officer of distinguished ability and enterprise.  Cheered by the hope of cordial co-operation, Hood and Nelson resumed without delay their enthusiastic efforts.  Within a week, on the 30th of May, the latter wrote that the “Agamemnon” was taking on board ammunition for the siege of Calvi, the last remaining of the hostile strongholds.  In the midst of the preparations, at eleven P.M. of June 6, word was received that nine French ships-of-the-line had come out of Toulon, and were believed to be bound for Calvi, with reinforcements for the garrison.  At seven the next morning the squadron was under way; the “Agamemnon,” which had two hundred tons of ordnance stores to unload, sailing only half an hour after her less encumbered consorts, whom she soon overtook.

Hood shaped his course for Calvi, being constrained thereto, not only by the rumor of the enemy’s destination, but also by the military necessity of effecting a junction with the rest of his fleet.  Admiral Hotham, who commanded the British division of seven ships in front of Toulon, instead of waiting to verify the report brought to him of the enemy’s force,—­which was actually the same, numerically, as his own,—­bore up hastily for Calvi, intending, so wrote Nelson at the time, to fight them there, rather than that they should throw in succors.  Whatever their numbers, thus to surrender touch of them at the beginning was an evident mistake, for