Upon Jervis’s naval future, the results of his early ordeal were wholly good.  Unable to pursue pleasure ashore, he stuck to sea-going ships; and the energies of a singularly resolute mind were devoted to mastering all the details of his profession.  After six years in the Caribbean, he returned to England in the autumn of 1754.  The troubles between France and Great Britain which issued in the Seven Years War had already begun, and Jervis, whose merit commanded immediate recognition from those under whom he served, found family influence to insure his speedy promotion and employment.  Being made lieutenant early in 1755, he was with Boscawen off the Gulf of St. Lawrence when that admiral, although peace yet reigned, was ordered to seize the French fleet bearing reinforcements to Quebec.  At the same time, Braddock’s unfortunate expedition was miscarrying in the forests of Pittsburg.  A year later, in 1756, Jervis went to the Mediterranean with Admiral Hawke, sent to relieve Byng after the fiasco at Minorca which brought that unhappy commander to trial and to death.

Before and during this Mediterranean cruise Jervis had been closely associated with Sir Charles Saunders, one of the most distinguished admirals of that generation, upon whom he made so favorable an impression that he was chosen for first lieutenant of the flag-ship, when Saunders, in 1758, was named to command the fleet to act against Quebec.  The gallant and romantic General Wolfe, whose death in the hour of victory saddened the triumph of the conquerors, embarked in the same ship; and the long passage favored the growth of a close personal intimacy between the two young men, who had been at school together as boys, although the soldier was several years older than the sailor.  The relations thus formed and the confidences exchanged are shown by a touching incident recorded by Jervis’s biographer.  On the night before the battle on the Heights of Abraham, Wolfe went on board the Porcupine, a small sloop of war to whose command Jervis had meanwhile been promoted, and asked to see him in private.  He then said that he was strongly impressed with the feeling that he should fall on the morrow, and therefore wished to entrust to his friend the miniature of the lady, Miss Lowther, to whom he was engaged, and to have from him the promise that, if the foreboding proved true, he would in person deliver to her both the portrait and Wolfe’s own last messages.  From the interview the young general departed to achieve his enterprise, to which daring action, brilliant success, and heroic death have given a lustre that time itself has not been able to dim, whose laurels remain green to our own day; while Jervis, to whose old age was reserved the glory that his comrade reaped in youth, remained behind to discharge his last request,—­a painful duty which, upon returning to England, was scrupulously fulfilled.