not forfeited your friendship.”  “I dined with his Lordship yesterday, who is apparently in good health,” wrote Ball to Lady Hamilton, “but he complains of indisposition and the necessity of repose.  I do not think a short stay here will hurt his health, particularly as his ship is at anchor, and his mind not harassed.  Troubridge and I are extremely anxious that the French ships, and the French garrison of La Valetta, shall surrender to him.  I would not urge it if I were not convinced that it will ultimately add both to his honour and happiness.”

The fear of his friends that he would lose honor, by not resisting inclination, is evident—­undisguised; but they could not prevail.  On the 4th of March he wrote to Lady Hamilton:  “My health is in such a state, and to say the truth, an uneasy mind at being taught my lesson like a school boy, that my DETERMINATION is made to leave Malta on the 15th morning of this month, on the first moment after the wind comes favourable; unless I am SURE that I shall get hold of the French ships.”  Keith’s directions had been full and explicit on details, and this Nelson seems to have resented.  Among the particular orders was one that Palermo, being so distant from Malta, should be discontinued as the rendezvous, and Syracuse substituted for it; Nelson was, however, at liberty to use Messina or Augusta, both also on the west coast of Sicily, if he preferred.  It will be remembered that Nelson himself, before he fell under the influence of Naples, had expressed his intention to make Syracuse the base of his operations.  Coming as this change did, as one of the first acts of a new commander-in-chief, coinciding with his own former judgment, it readily took the color of an implied censure upon his prolonged stay at Palermo—­an echo of the increasing scandal that attended it.

On the 10th of March he left Malta for Palermo in the “Foudroyant,” sending the ship back, however, to take her place in the blockade, and hoisting his own flag on board a transport.  His mind was now rapidly turning towards a final retirement from the station, a decision which was accelerated by the capture of the “Guillaume Tell.”  This eighty-gun ship started on the night of March 29th to run out from La Valetta, to relieve the famished garrison from feeding the twelve hundred men she carried.  Fortunately, the “Foudroyant” had resumed her station off the island; and it was a singular illustration of the good fortune of the “heaven-born” admiral, to repeat Ball’s expression, that she arrived barely in time, only a few hours before the event, her absence from which might have resulted in the escape of the enemy, and a just censure upon Nelson.  The French ship was sighted first by a frigate, the “Penelope,” Captain Blackwood, which hung gallantly upon her quarters, as Nelson in former days had dogged the “Ca Ira” with the “Agamemnon,” until the heavier ships could gather round the quarry.  The “Guillaume Tell,” necessarily intent only on escape from