In the subsequent trial of Captain Fox,—­the minutes of which the present writer has not seen,—­it appears, according to the biographer of Lord Hawke,[6] that it was Captain Saunders’s and Captain Rodney’s “sense of being deserted by Fox, and of the two French ships having escaped through his failure of duty, which forms the chief feature of the Court-Martial.  Rodney especially describes his being exposed to the fire of four of the enemy’s ships, when, as he asserted, Fox’s ship might well have taken off some of it.”  The incident is very noteworthy, for it bears the impress of personal character.  Intolerance of dereliction of duty, and uncompromising condemnation of the delinquent, were ever leading traits in Rodney’s course as a commander-in-chief.  He stood over his officers with a rod, dealt out criticism unsparingly, and avowed it as his purpose and principle of action so to rule.  It is not meant that his censures were undeserved, or even excessive; but there entered into them no ingredient of pity.  His despatches are full of complaints, both general and specific.  When he spared, it was from a sense of expediency,—­or of justice, a trait in which he was by no means deficient; but for human weakness he had no bowels.  Hawke complains of but this one captain, Fox, and towards him he seems not to have evinced the strong feeling that animated his juniors.  Each man has his special gift, and to succeed must needs act in accordance with it.

There are those who lead and those who drive; Hawke belonged to the one class, Rodney to the other.

In direct consequence of this difference of temperament, it will be found, in contrasting the schools of which Hawke and Rodney are the conspicuous illustrations, that the first represents the spirit, and the second the form, which were the two efficient elements of the progress made during the eighteenth century.  The one introduces into a service arrested in development, petrified almost, by blindly accepted rules and unintelligent traditions, a new impulse, which transforms men from within, breaking through the letter of the law in order to realize its forgotten intent; the other gives to the spirit, thus freed from old limitations, a fresh and sagacious direction, but needs nevertheless to impose its own methods by constraint from without.  It is the old struggle, ever renewed, between liberty and law; in the due, but difficult, combination of which consist both conservation and progress.

And so in the personality of the two great admirals who respectively represent these contrasting schools of practice; while we find in both these two elements, as they must exist in every efficient officer, yet it is to be said that the one inspires and leads, the other moulds and compels.  The one, though seemingly reserved, is in character sympathetic, and influences by example chiefly; the other, austerely courteous, is towards associates distant and ungenial, working by fear rather than by love.  For these broad