his time, so as, to use Napoleon’s phrase, to have the most of the chances on his side when he attacked.  This also we know he meant to do.  “I will wait, till they give me an opportunity too tempting to be resisted, or till they draw near the shores of Europe.”  In such qualification is to be seen the equipoise of the highest order of ability.  This union of desperate energy with calculating wariness was in him not so much a matter of reasoning, though reason fully endorses it, as it was the gift of nature,—­genius, in short.  Reasoning of a very high order illuminates Nelson’s mental processes and justifies his conclusions, but it is not in the power of reason, when face to face with emergency, to bridge the chasm that separates perception, however clear, from the inward conviction which alone sustains the loftiest action.  “Responsibility,” said St. Vincent, “is the test of a man’s courage.”  Emergency, it may be said, is the test of his faith in his beliefs.

While those at the head of the State thus hung upon his counsels, and drew encouragement from his indomitable confidence, the people in the streets looked up to him with that wistful and reverent dependence which does not wholly understand, but centres all its trust upon a tried name.  They knew what he had done in the now distant past, and they had heard lately that he had been to the West Indies, and had returned, having saved the chief jewel among the colonies of the empire.  They knew, also, that their rulers were fearful about invasion, and that in some undefined way Nelson had stood, and would yet stand, between them and harm.  The rapidity of his movements left little interval between the news of his being back at Gibraltar and the announcement of his arrival at Portsmouth, which was not generally expected.  On the 19th of August, a day after the “Victory” anchored at Spithead, Lord Radstock wrote:  “’T is extraordinary no official accounts have been received from Lord Nelson since the 27th of July.  He then hinted that he might perhaps go to Ireland; nevertheless, we have had no tidings of him on that coast.  I confess I begin to be fearful that he has worried his mind up to that pitch, that he cannot bear the idea of showing himself again to the world, until he shall have struck some blow, and that it is this hope that is now making him run about, half-frantic, in quest of adventures.  That such unparalleled perseverance and true valor should thus evaporate in air is truly melancholy.”

If any doubt of the approval of his countrymen mingled with the distress Nelson unquestionably felt at having missed the enemy, he was touchingly undeceived.  As soon as the “Victory” and his flag were made out, the people flocked to Portsmouth, collecting on the ramparts of the town and other points of view, in inaudible testimony of welcome.  As the barge pulled to the shore, and upon landing, he was greeted with loud and long-continued cheering.  In London the same demonstrations continued whenever he was