colorless war, was not a brilliant victory for the British Navy, but a crushing defeat for the foe.  “I hope my absence will not be long,” he wrote to Davison, “and that I shall soon meet the combined fleets with a force sufficient to do the job well:  for half a victory would but half content me.  But I do not believe the Admiralty can give me a force within fifteen or sixteen sail-of-the-line of the enemy; and therefore, if every ship took her opponent, we should have to contend with a fresh fleet of fifteen or sixteen sail-of-the-line.  But I will do my best; and I hope God Almighty will go with me.  I have much to lose, but little to gain; and I go because it’s right, and I will serve the Country faithfully.”  He doubtless did not know then that Calder, finding Villeneuve had gone to Cadiz, had taken thither the eighteen ships detached with him from the Brest blockade, and that Bickerton had also joined from within the Mediterranean, so that Collingwood, at the moment he was writing, had with him twenty-six of the line.  His anticipation, however, was substantially correct.  Despite every effort, the Admiralty up to a fortnight before Trafalgar had not given him the number of ships he thought necessary, to insure certain watching, and crushing defeat.  He was particularly short of the smaller cruisers wanted.

On the 12th of September Minto took his leave of him.  “I went yesterday to Merton,” he wrote on the 13th, “in a great hurry, as Lord Nelson said he was to be at home all day, and he dines at half-past three.  But I found he had been sent for to Carleton House, and he and Lady Hamilton did not return till half-past five.”  The Prince of Wales had sent an urgent command that he particularly wished to see him before he left England.  “I stayed till ten at night,” continues Minto, “and I took a final leave of him.  He goes to Portsmouth to-night.  Lady Hamilton was in tears all day yesterday, could not eat, and hardly drink, and near swooning, and all at table.  It is a strange picture.  She tells me nothing can be more pure and ardent than this flame.”  Lady Hamilton may have had the self-control of an actress, but clearly not the reticence of a well-bred woman.

On the following night Nelson left home finally.  His last act before leaving the house, it is said, was to visit the bed where his child, then between four and five, was sleeping, and pray over her.  The solemn anticipation of death, which from this time forward deepened more and more over his fearless spirit, as the hour of battle approached, is apparent in the record of his departure made in his private diary:—­

    Friday Night, September 13th.