Nelson knew that the Admiralty was besieged with admirals, many senior to himself, seeking for employment, and that it would be very difficult for it to resist the pressure for the vacancy in “my favourite command,” to resume which he was impelled by both his sense of duty and his love of glory.  He wrote therefore to Elliot, and to the King of the Two Sicilies, in the same sense as he had to Melville, recalling his well-tried devotion to the interests of that Court, which a successor might not equally show, and suggesting that his cause would be strengthened by an application for his return on the part of the King.  The latter consequently intimated to the British Government that he hoped Lord Nelson would be sent back.  He was, in truth, so much agitated over the prospect of his going, that he offered him a house in either Palermo or Naples, if he wished to remain in the South to recruit; an offer which Elliot, equally uneasy, urged him to accept.

The Government did exactly what was asked.  Nelson received permission to go to England, when he felt it necessary, leaving the command in the hands of Bickerton; but at the same time the Admiralty had to meet the rush of claimants for the vacancy, all the more pressing because rumors were afloat of a Spanish war, which would make the Mediterranean not only the most important, but, in prize-money, the most lucrative command.  Among the applicants was Sir John Orde, who had been nursing a technical grievance ever since he had been passed over, in Nelson’s favor, for the command of the detachment with which the Battle of the Nile was fought.  Nelson’s leave was issued on the 6th of October, and on the 26th Orde was given a small squadron—­five ships-of-the-line—­to blockade Cadiz.  Being senior to Nelson, and of course to Bickerton, he could only have this position by reducing the latter’s station, which had extended to Cape Finisterre.  The line between the two commands was drawn at the Straits’ mouth, a rather vague phrase, but Gibraltar was left with Nelson.  Orde thus got the station for prize-money, and Nelson that for honor, which from youth until now he most valued.  “The arrangement,” wrote his friend, Lord Radstock, “will be a death-stroke to his hopes of the galleons; but as your chief has ever showed himself to be as great a despiser of riches as he is a lover of glory, I am fully convinced in my own mind that he would sooner defeat the French fleet than capture fifty galleons.”

Nevertheless, Nelson was sorely aggrieved, and complained bitterly to his correspondents.  “I have learnt not to be surprised at anything; but the sending an officer to such a point, to take, if it is a Spanish war, the whole harvest, after all my trials (God knows unprofitable enough! for I am a much poorer man than when we started in the Amphion,) seems a little hard:  but patienza.”  “He is sent off Cadiz to reap the golden harvest, as Campbell was to reap my sugar harvest.  It’s very