You must, my dear Lord, forgive the warmth which I express for Captain Layman; but he is in adversity, and, therefore, has the more claim to my attention and regard.  If I had been censured every time I have run my ship, or fleets under my command, into great danger, I should long ago have been out of the Service, and never in the House of Peers.

    I am, my dear Lord, most faithfully, your obedient servant,

    NELSON AND BRONTE.

It is something to meet with the clear recognition that a man may be of more value than a ship.  As Clarendon said, it is not all of an officer’s duty to bring his ship safe home again.

On the voyage back from Alexandria be had busied himself with vindications of his course in going there, manifesting again that over-sensitiveness to the judgment of others, which contrasts so singularly with his high resolve and self-dependence when assuming the greatest responsibilities.  To Ball, to the Admiralty, and to the First Lord privately, he sent explanations of his action, accompanied by a summary of his reasons.  As the latter have been given, one by one, as each step was taken, it is not necessary here to say more than that, in the author’s judgment, each successive movement was made upon good; grounds, and rightly timed.  This is true, although Nelson was entirely misled as to Bonaparte’s object.  The ruse of the latter, as put into effect by Villeneuve, not only deceived the British admiral, but, in its issue, confounded the French.  The critical moment of decision, for the whole fruitless campaign, was when Nelson determined to go first off Messina, then to the Morea, and finally to Egypt, upon the inference that by this time one of three things must have happened.  Either (1) he must have met the French fleet, personally or by his lookouts, or (2) it had returned to Toulon, or (3) it had gone on to Egypt.  The first being eliminated, the choice he made between the others, wide as was the flight for which it called, was perfectly accurate.  It is difficult to know which most to admire,—­the sagacity which divined the actual, though not the intended, movements of the enemy, the fiery eagerness which gave assurance of a fierce and decisive battle, or the great self-restraint which, in all his fever of impatience, withheld him from precipitating action before every means of information was exhausted.  There will be occasion to note again the same traits in the yet sharper trial he was soon to undergo.