off the coast of Portugal.  I am aware of the importance of my getting to the Mediterranean, and think I might safely have been allowed to proceed in the Victory.”  At 6 P.M. of that day, Cornwallis not turning up, he tumbled himself and his suite on board the frigate “Amphion,” which was in company, and continued his voyage, going out in all the discomfort of “a convict,” to use St. Vincent’s expression; “seven or eight sleeping in one cabin,” as Nelson himself described it.  “It is against my own judgment but in obedience to orders,” he told the Earl; while to the Prime Minister, with whom he was in personal correspondence, he lamented the loss, “for I well know the weight of the Victory in the Mediterranean.”  As he anticipated, Cornwallis did not want the ship, and she joined Nelson two months afterwards off Toulon.

Late in the evening of June 3d, the “Amphion” anchored at Gibraltar, whither she brought the first certain news of the war, though it had been declared nearly three weeks before.  The next day was actively employed in giving necessary instructions to the yard officials, and detailing cruisers to guard the entrance to the Straits, and to maintain the communications with the Barbary coast, upon which the Rock depended for supplies of fresh provisions.  At 4 P.M. the ship again sailed for Malta, accompanied by the frigate “Maidstone,” to which, on the 11th of June, was transferred, for direct passage to Naples by the north of Sicily, the new British minister to the Two Sicilies, Mr. Elliot, who had embarked with Nelson on board the “Victory,” and afterwards gone with him to the “Amphion.”  Throughout the following two years an active correspondence, personal and diplomatic, was maintained with this gentleman, who, like his brother, Lord Minto, placed the utmost dependence upon the political sagacity and tact of the admiral.  When the latter, a year later, spoke of leaving the station on account of his health, Elliot wrote to him:  “Where such great interests are concerned, I shall not presume to dwell upon my own feelings, although I cannot but recall to your Lordship that I only consented to depart as abruptly as I did from England, to undertake this arduous and ruinous mission, from the expectation that my efforts to direct the councils of this Kingdom would have been seconded by your pre-eminent talents and judgment.”  After the two frigates parted, the “Amphion” kept on to Malta, where she arrived on the 15th of June.

With the separation of the “Maidstone” Nelson began the extensive diplomatic correspondence, which employed so much of his time during this command, and through which we are made familiar with the workings of his mind on the general political conditions of the Mediterranean.  She carried from him letters to the King and Queen of the Sicilies, to their Prime Minister, Acton, and to the British minister to the Court of Sardinia.  To these succeeded, upon his arrival in Malta,—­as a better point of departure for the farther East, now that the French held the west coast of the Adriatic,—­despatches to the British minister to the Porte, to the Grand Vizier and the Capitan Pacha, to the Republic of the Seven Islands, as the group of Corfu and its sisters was now styled, and to the British representative to their government.