to the family circle at Merton, where probably the expression, “Nelson touch,” originated.  It occurs chiefly, if not wholly, in his letters to Lady Hamilton, to whom, some days before reaching the fleet, he wrote, “I am anxious to join, for it would add to my grief if any other man was to give them the Nelson touch, which WE say is warranted never to fail;” but there may be a quaint allusion to it in the motto he told Rose he had adopted:  “Touch and Take.”

When Nelson left England, he was intrusted by the First Lord with the delicate and unpleasant mission of communicating to Sir Robert Calder the dissatisfaction of the Government with his conduct, in the encounter with the allied fleets the previous July; especially for failing to keep touch with them and bring them again to action.  The national outcry was too strong to be disregarded, nor is it probable that the Admiralty took a more lenient view of the matter.  At all events, an inquiry was inevitable, and the authorities seem to have felt that it was a favor to Calder to permit him to ask for the Court which in any case must be ordered.  “I did not fail,” wrote Nelson to Barham, “immediately on my arrival, to deliver your message to Sir Robert Calder; and it will give your Lordship pleasure to find, as it has me, that an inquiry is what the Vice-Admiral wishes, and that he had written to you by the Nautilus, which I detained, to say so.  Sir Robert thinks that he can clearly prove, that it was not in his power to bring the combined squadrons again to battle.”

Nelson felt a profound sympathy for the unfortunate officer, pursued by the undiscriminating and ignorant fury of popular clamor, the extent and intensity of which he had had opportunity to realize when in England.  While he probably did not look for so tragic an issue, the execution of Byng under a similar odium and a similar charge, although expressly cleared of cowardice and disaffection, was still fresh in the naval mind.  “Sir Robert has an ordeal to pass through,” he wrote Collingwood, “which he little expects.”  His own opinion upon the case seems to have undergone some modification, since the generous outburst with which he at first deprecated the prejudgment of a disappointed and frightened people; nor could it well fail, as details became known to him, that he should pass a silent censure upon proceedings, which contravened alike his inward professional convictions, and his expressed purposes of action for a similar contingency.  “I have had, as you will believe, a very distressing scene with poor Sir Robert Calder,” he told Lady Hamilton.  “He has wrote home to beg an inquiry, feeling confident that he can fully justify himself.  I sincerely hope he may, but—­I have given him the advice as to my dearest friend.  He is in adversity, and if he ever has been my enemy, he now feels the pang of it, and finds me one of his best friends.”  “Sir Robert Calder,” he wrote to another correspondent, “has just left us to stand his trial, which I think of a very