in works not strictly within their assigned duty.  In the other case, where good will, a temperate exercise of authority, indulgence, when it can by possibility be granted, and, above all, when no coarse language unworthy the lips of an officer and a gentleman is used, the result is very different.  All the subordinate authorities, and indeed the crew at large, then become insensibly possessed of an elasticity of obedience which exerts a two-fold influence, by reacting on themselves even more than it operates upon the commanding-officer whose judicious deportment has called out the exertion.  I may safely add, that in the strict discipline which is absolutely indispensable in every efficient man-of-war, and under all the circumstances of confinement, privation, and other inevitable hardships to which both officers and men are exposed, such a course of moderation and good-breeding, independently of its salutary effect on the minds of the people, works most admirably for the public service, and more than doubles the results, by rendering men, who otherwise might have been disposed to retard the duty, sincerely zealous in its advancement.

Lord Nelson, that great master of war and discipline, and all that was noble and good in the cause of his country, understood, better perhaps than any other officer, the art of applying these wholesome maxims to the practice of duty at the exact moment of need.  During the long and weary period when Lord Nelson was blockading Toulon, he was joined from England by a line-of-battle ship, commanded by an officer who, as the story goes, had long applied for and expected an appointment to a cruising frigate, and who, in consequence of this disappointment, came growling out to join the fleet, in high dudgeon with the Admiralty at being condemned, as he called it, to the galley-slave duty of a blockade, in a wretched old tub of a 74, instead of ranging at large in a gay frigate over the Atlantic or the Adriatic, and nabbing up prizes by the dozen.  It appears farther, that he rather unreasonably extended a portion of his indignation to the Admiral, who, of course, had nothing to do with his appointment; and this sulky frame of mind might have proved the captain’s ruin, had his Admiral been any other than Nelson.  But the genius of that great officer appeared to delight in such occasions of recalling people to a sense of their duty, and directing their passions and motives into the channels most useful to themselves and their country.  Knowing the officer to be a clever man, and capable of performing good service if he chose, it was Nelson’s cue to make it his choice.  When, therefore, the captain came on board, full of irritability and provocation, the Admiral took no notice, but chatted with him during breakfast on the news from England, and other indifferent matters, as if his guest had been in the best humour possible.  The other, who was nursing his displeasure, waited only for an opportunity of exploding, when he could do so without a breach of decorum.  Lord Nelson soon gave him the occasion he appeared to seek for, by begging him to step into the after-cabin, and then asking him what he thought of the station, and how he should like cruising in the Levant and other interesting parts of the Mediterranean.