The district thus assigned to him was taken out of the commands hitherto held by some very reputable admirals, senior to himself, who otherwise retained their previous charges, surrounding and touching his own; while at the Scheldt he trenched closely upon the province of the commander-in-chief in the North Sea.  Such circumstances are extremely liable to cause friction and bad blood, and St. Vincent, who with all his despotism was keenly alive to the just susceptibilities of meritorious officers, was very careful to explain to them that he had with the greatest reluctance yielded to the necessity of combining the preparations for defence under a single flag-officer, who should have no other care.  The innate tact, courtesy, and thoughtful consideration which distinguished Nelson, when in normal conditions, removed all other misunderstandings.  “The delicacy you have always shown to senior officers,” wrote St. Vincent to him, “is a sure presage of your avoiding by every means in your power to give umbrage to Admiral Dickson, who seems disposed to judge favourably of the intentions of us all:  it is, in truth, the most difficult card we have to play.”  “Happy should I be,” he said at another time, “to place the whole of our offensive and defensive war under your auspices, but you are well aware of the difficulties on that head.”  From first to last there is no trace of a serious jar, and Nelson’s instructions to his subordinates were such as to obviate the probability of any.  “I feel myself, my dear Lord,” he wrote St. Vincent, relative to a projected undertaking on the Dutch coast, “as anxious to get a medal, or a step in the peerage as if I had never got either.  If I succeeded, and burnt the Dutch fleet, probably medals and an earldom.  I must have had every desire to try the matter, regardless of the feelings of others; but I should not have been your Nelson, that wants not to take honours or rewards from any man; and if ever I feel great, it is, my dear Lord, in never having, in thought, word, or deed, robbed any man of his fair fame.”

He was accompanied from London by a young commander, Edward Parker, who seems first to have become known to him in the Baltic, and who now acted as an additional aide.  The latter was filled with the admiration, felt by most of those thrown into contact with Nelson, for the rapidity with which he transacted business, and set all about him in movement.  “He is the cleverest and quickest man, and the most zealous in the world.  In the short time we were in Sheerness, he regulated and gave orders for thirty of the ships under his command, made every one pleased, filled them with emulation, and set them all on the qui vive.”  In forty-eight hours he was off again for the Downs, by land, having to make some inquiries on the way as to the organization, and readiness to serve, of the Sea Fencibles, a large body of naval reserves, who were exempt from impressment upon the understanding that they would come forward for coast