“I will leave them alone till they offer me an opportunity too tempting to be resisted,”—­that speaks for itself,—­or, “until we approach the shores of Europe,” when the matter can no longer be deferred, and the twenty ships must be taken out of Napoleon’s hosts, even though eleven be destroyed to effect this.  The preparedness of mind is to be noted, and yet more the firmness of the conviction, in the strength of which alone such deeds are done.  It is the man of faith who is ever the man of works.

Singularly enough, his plans were quickly to receive the best of illustrations by the failure of contrary methods.  Scarcely a month later fifteen British ships, under another admiral, met these twenty, which Nelson with eleven now sought in vain.  They did not part without a battle, but they did part without a decisive battle; they were not kept in sight afterwards; they joined and were incorporated with Napoleon’s great armada; they had further wide opportunities of mischief; and there followed for the people of Great Britain a period of bitter suspense and wide-spread panic.  “What a game had Villeneuve to play!” said Napoleon of those moments.  “Does not the thought of the possibilities remaining to Villeneuve,” wrote Lord Radstock of Calder’s fruitless battle, “make your blood boil when you reflect on the never to be forgotten 22d of July?  Notwithstanding the inferiority of Lord Nelson’s numbers,” he says at the same time, with keen appreciation of the man he knew so well, “should he be so lucky as to fall in with the enemy, I have no doubt that he would never quit them[105] until he should have destroyed or taken some of the French ships; and that he himself would seek the French admiral’s ship, if possible, I would pledge my life on it.”  “There is such an universal bustle and cry about invasion, that no other subject will be listened to at present by those in power.  I found London almost a desert, and no good news stirring to animate it; on the contrary, the few faces I saw at the Admiralty at once confirmed the truth of the report of the combined squadron having safely arrived at Ferrol.”  This was after Calder had met and fought them, and let them get out of his sight.

Lord Minto, speaking of the same crisis, says:  “There has been the greatest alarm ever known in the city of London, since the combined fleet [Villeneuve’s] sailed from Ferrol.  If they had captured our homeward-bound convoys, it is said the India Company and half the city must have been bankrupt.”  These gleams of the feelings of the times, reflected by two men in close contact with the popular apprehensions, show what Nelson was among British admirals to the men of his day, and why he was so.  “Great and important as the victory is,” wrote Minto, three months later, after the news of Trafalgar, “it is bought too dearly, even for our interest, by the death of Nelson.  We shall want more victories yet, and to whom can we look for them?  The navy