recognized in public.  “Lord Nelson arrived a few days ago,” wrote Radstock.  “He was received in town almost as a conqueror, and was followed round by the people with huzzas.  So much for a great and good name most nobly and deservedly acquired.”  “I met Nelson in a mob in Piccadilly,” wrote Minto at the same time, “and got hold of his arm, so that I was mobbed too.  It is really quite affecting to see the wonder and admiration, and love and respect of the whole world; and the genuine expression of all these sentiments at once, from gentle and simple, the moment he is seen.  It is beyond anything represented in a play or in a poem of fame.”  In these few days was concentrated the outward reward of a life spent in the service of his country.  During them, Nelson was conspicuously the first man in England,—­first alike in the love of the people and in importance to the State.

On the private side, also, his life for this brief respite was eminently happy, marred only by the prospect of a speedy departure, the signal for which sounded even sooner than was expected.  By his own account, he was only four times in London, and all the moments that could be spared from external calls he spent at Merton, where there gathered a large family party, including all his surviving brothers and sisters, with several of their children.  “I cannot move at present,” he writes on the 31st of August, in declining an invitation, “as all my family are with me, and my stay is very uncertain; and, besides, I have refused for the present all invitations.”  “I went to Merton on Saturday” (August 24th), wrote Minto, “and found Nelson just sitting down to dinner, surrounded by a family party, of his brother the Dean, Mrs. Nelson, their children, and the children of a sister.  Lady Hamilton at the head of the table, and Mother Cadogan[114] at the bottom.  I had a hearty welcome.  He looks remarkably well and full of spirits.  His conversation is a cordial in these low times.  Lady Hamilton has improved and added to the house and the place extremely well, without his knowing she was about it.  He found it already done.  She is a clever being, after all:  the passion is as hot as ever.”

Over all hung, unseen, the sword of Damocles.  Nelson himself seems to have been possessed already by vague premonitions of the coming end, which deepened and darkened around him as he went forward to his fate.  The story told of his saying to the upholsterer, who had in charge the coffin made from the mast of the “Orient,” that a certificate of its identity should be engraved on the lid, because he thought it highly probable that he might want it on his return, is, indeed, but a commonplace, light-hearted remark, which derives what significance it has purely from the event; but it is easy to recognize in his writings the recurrent, though intermittent, strain of unusual foreboding.  Life then held much for him; and it is when richest that the possibility of approaching loss possesses the consciousness with the sense of probability.  Upon a soul of his heroic temper, however, such presentiments, though they might solemnize and consecrate the passing moments, had no power to appall, nor to convert cheerfulness into gloom.  The light that led him never burned more brightly, nor did he ever follow with more unfaltering step.