Still more important was the moral influence which these attacks impressed on the enemy.  When the inhabitants along the southern coasts of Europe could scarcely look upon the waters without seeing an English cruiser; when they saw the apparent ease with which their strongest defences were carried; when they felt themselves at the mercy of the assailants, yet always experienced their forbearance and protection; the respect felt for an enemy so powerful and generous, taught them to desire the more earnestly their own day of deliverance from the common tyrant.  And when the tremendous judgment which visited him in the Russian campaign offered the prospect of his speedy and final overthrow, every facility existed for acquainting them with the full extent of his reverses, and preparing them to avail themselves of the earliest opportunity to assert their freedom.  “Affairs in these countries,” says Sir Edward, in one of his letters, “look well, and promise much next summer, all over the East.  Detestation, amounting to horror, is the general expression against this tyrant of the earth.”

The ordinary cares and duties of his command, and his very extensive correspondence, for the number of letters he was in the habit of writing on service was almost incredible, were by no means Sir Edward’s heaviest charge.  Perhaps there was no ambassador on whom a greater diplomatic responsibility was imposed than on the commander in the Mediterranean.  It formed by much the largest and most anxious portion of Collingwood’s duties, and the greatness of the trust, the impossibility of confiding it to another than the commander on the station, and the uncommon ability with which Collingwood sustained it, gave the British Government much uneasiness when the state of that officer’s health threatened to deprive them of his services.  It increased materially in extent and importance after Sir Edward had succeeded to the command, when the reverses of the French in Russia opened a prospect of deliverance to all the states along the shores of the Mediterranean, including the southern provinces of France itself.  Sir Edward exerted himself unceasingly to prepare them for this consummation, and to encourage them to seize the first opportunity to effect it; and the judgment he displayed in these services obtained from a British Cabinet minister the declaration, that “great as he may be as a sea-officer, he is still greater as a statesman.”

One professional distinction was yet wanting, and this he anxiously desired, as a means of hastening an honourable peace, and on personal grounds, perhaps, to connect his name with the history of his country—­to command in a general action.  Though the enemy had shrunk from meeting him, as he expected when he first assumed the command, yet, while they continued to build ships of the largest class, and to keep their fleet always ready for sea, he could not but hope that they only waited for a favourable opportunity to try