and W. Boone.

ON Michaelmas-day, in the year 1758, the wife of the rector of Burnham Thorpe was delivered of a sickly boy. At that moment Anson was in command of the channel fleet, and there were old men then in England who had seen Prince Rupert. Exactly a quarter of a century had elapsed since Admiral Byng had surrendered life. Russell, who beat Tourville at La Hogue, had been asleep in the grave for more than thirty years. Churchill, and Dilkes, the terror of Frenchmen and Spaniards in his day, had been at rest for just half a century. These were great men; but in 1758 a greater than all was born in the quiet rectory of Burnham Thorpe. That feeble baby, accepted and tolerated rather than welcomed and cherished, grew up in the possession of all the virtues of the above heroes, and with but few of their failings; he had the dashing spirit of Rupert without his imprudence; he possessed the wisdom and valor of Byng with out his cold-heartedness; he was as persevering as Anson, and in no wise so foolish; as rapid as Russell, but not so rapacious; he was even more enterprising and successful than Dilkes; and, as with the gallant brother of Marlborough, his services claimed high honors long before he obtained them. This puny, fragile child, born to achieve such greatness-this almost neglected son of a Norfolk parson, and, by his mother, grandson of a Westminster prebendary-designed, as it were, by nature to be a student, "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought," and to cultivate learned leisure in trim gardens this feeble instrument was born with a great mission; let the splendor of its fulfilment make us forgetful of his very few errors!

Yes, when he first saw the light there were old men in England who had seen Prince Rupert beneath the beeches at Windsor. It was but the other day that Nelson's sister died. Thus is he connected with two periods when the people were at issue with sovereigns; his figure stands halfway between the time when Roundheads were assailing cavaliers and royalty, and the present period, when democracy is again howling at palace gates and the hearths of nobles. In his own days the same struggle was going on; but as now, and not in Rupert's time, the scene of the struggle was not within our boundary of home. He was the great champion of royalty, and never had crowned king CCLXXXVII. LIVING AGE. VOL. XX111. 19

so unconquerable a champion as he. There was not a democrat abroad who did not hate his name as much as he feared it. For the French democrats his own hatred was in equal measure intense; and, if it be suggested that his contempt was not less intense for French aristocrats, we answer that he lived at a period when the vices, the selfishness, and the tyranny of the aristocracy, justified the insurrection, which annihilated one bad system to give temporary life to a worse. He did not despise the dissolute men and the more dissolute women of Naples less than he despised the French; but, in supporting the one and destroying the other, he was the great antagonist of anarchy, and the great promoter of order at home. Loyalty here flourished by the blood of his victories. The veriest would-be rebel in England was proud of the pale warrior whose feeble arm upheld a world of thrones; a defeat at Aboukir might have made him a republican. But we are hurried from Nelson's cradle to his glories and his grave. Let us sketch his wondrous career in a more orderly spirit.

A

She who bore the perils of his birth did not survive to be glad at his greatness. At nine Nelson was motherless-at twelve he quitted school-and some of his playfellows were yet launching their paper galleons on Norfolk ponds when Nelson had gained respect and reputation for his name. trip of a few brief months' duration with his maternal uncle, Captain Suckling, just introduced him to naval life without affording him instruction. The latter he derived under Captain John Rathborn, a naval officer, engaged for the time in the West India trade, under whom Nelson acquired a thorough acquaintance with practical seamanship, and was ever ready to acknowledge his obligation. The writer of this paper acknowledges his pride, too, in telling his son that his mother is the granddaughter of Nelson's tutor. Horatio began his real service in the royal navy by entering the Triumph, rated as captain's servant." In a year or so he became midshipman, the duties of which office he efficiently performed during four or five years on board the same vessel, and in the Carcass, the Seahorse, and the Dolphin. During this period he saw active service in every climate, from the North Pole to Bagdad and Bussorah. We next find him as lieutenant on board the Worcester and the Lowestoft. While on board the last-mentioned vessel he made his first prize, gallantly boarding and capturing an American privateer, from an attempt at which the first lieutenant had retired unsuccessful; and this was accomplished when he was only nineteen years of age! So fond was he of this branch of his profession, that he changed to the schooner Lucy, with a sort of roving commis sion, of which the American traders soon became

tremblingly conscious. He subsequently served in the Bristol (the flag-ship of Sir Peter Parker) in the three degrees of lieutenancy; and, in 1778, ere he was yet twenty, the boy was captain of the Badger brig, and with men eager to obey him. But his just ambition was not yet satisfied; and when in his twenty-first year he had the delight of finding himself posted, and in command of the Hinchinbrook, his whole course of daring and dangerous service in the Gulf of Mexico plainly manifested that he was ever keeping in view that " top of the tree" whose leafy honors first invited him from his father's rectory. The service alluded to seriously affected his own health, and cost the lives of one hundred and ninety out of his crew of two hundred men. On his return home he rested at Bath for a year. He had no long leisure to be ill. The following year saw him in the old French Albermarle, carrying terror along the Spanish main. In 1782 he was employed in convoy service; and, having occasionally some idle time on shore at Quebec, the young commander got into mischief-that is, he fell most imprudently into love. His friends carried him by violence on board; the sea air cured his passion; and his lucky joining with Hood's fleet, and his subsequent busy time in the West Indies, effectually kept his thoughts from any lady then on land. It was at this period that he became known to the Duke of Clarence. The royal sailor thought him the merest boy of a captain that had ever been seen, and could not but laugh at the gigantic and endless queue that hung down his back, and seemed to be pulling all the lank unpowdered hair off his head after it. But this plain-looking and youthful commander was then remarkable for being as well acquainted with all naval matters as the oldest and most experienced captain in the fleet. The piping time of peace put him for a season on half-pay. A portion of 1783, and of the year following it, was passed in France. With idleness came evil; and, having nothing better to do, Nelson fell desperately in love with the dowerless daughter of an English clergyman, who, there is some reason to believe, was little affected by the magic he could offer her of half-pay and love in a cottage. The sea again stood his friend. In 1784 the Boreas carried him to the Leeward Islands, where, at great risk of purse and person, he was actively engaged in supporting those Navigation Laws which our modern whigs have so ruthlessly

abolished.

In this matter (says Dr. Pettigrew) he was also opposed by Major General Sir T. Shirly, the governor of the Leeward Islands, who took in dudgeon the advice of Nelson, and assured him that old generals were not in the habit of taking advice from young gentlemen. Upon which Nelson, with much promptitude and ingenuity, replied " Sir, I am as old as the prime minister of England, and think myself as capable of commanding one of his majesty's ships as that minister is of governing the state."

He was engaged in putting down the illicit traffic sought to be carried on by the Americans

(whom successful rebellion had made foreigners) and the West Indies, and also in dragging into light the frauds practised by some English officials of no inconsiderable dignity in the islands. He succeeded in all he undertook, but got small thanks and no profit for any service which, in this respect, he rendered to his country. He was much on shore, too; and it is a fact that his foot no sooner touched the land than his good genius left him. He fell in love with a widow; and, what is much worse, married her. In the island of Nevis he became acquainted with Mrs. Nisbet, the widow of a surgeon who had died insane a year and a half after their marriage, leaving her with one son, Josiah, who subsequently owed so much to Nelson, and thanked him so little for it. At this time the captain of the Boreas was a man at whom Fame held her finger; he never drank wine save to the healths of his sovereign, the royal family, and his admiral, and these were always bumper toasts to him. He was reserved, grave, and silent; and it was only occasional flashes that gave evidence of the brilliancy within. The narrowminded people of Nevis could not make him out; and Mrs. Nisbet was set at him, as she was expected to make something of him, because "she had been in the habit of attending to such odd sort of people." Unfortunately, she made a husband of him. She, perhaps, thought it a condescension to marry a man who was of "puny constitutionwho was reduced to a skeleton-and who put his hopes of recovery in asses' milk and doctors." However this may be, she never looked upon him as a hero, nor was she worthy of being a hero's wife. She would have been exemplary as the spouse of a village apothecary; she was highly virtuous, very respectable, and exceedingly illtempered. The ill-assorted pair were united in 1786; they reached England in 1787, in which year Nelson was kept for months on board his ship at Sheerness, merely taking in slops and lodging pressed seamen. And then ensued the quietest six years of his life; they were passed at Burnham Thorpe, and they were got through with tolerably good success. As a quiet country couple, there was nothing to disturb their stagnant felicity. Nelson busied himself in gardening, getting birds'nests, and fretting for employment.

Sir

It came in 1793; when, in place of capturing birds'-nests, Nelson, in the Agamemnon, was with the fleet at the capture of Toulon, its forts, and its navy. But other things came in 1793, too. Nelson was sent to Naples with despatches for our minister, Sir William Hamilton. He was much on shore, and mischief came of it, of course. William told his wife, the too famous, too erring, and yet much sinned-against Lady Hamilton, that a little man was coming to dine with him, who was infirm and ill-looking, but who had in him the stuff of a hero, and who was undoubtedly destined to be the man for the difficulties coming. If Emma Hamilton loved a virtue, it was that of courage and ability in man; she loved heroes, and her ar dent feelings were soon interested in Nelson.

revealing of which lie the chief merit and the chief recommendation of Dr. Pettigrew's excellent volumes. Lord Howe appointed him (over five senior captains) to blockade Genoa. In 1794 he was active against the French in Corsica, and his men so entered into his own spirit that, as he said himself, they minded shot no more than peas. But for him, Bastia would not have been taken, nor, perhaps, Cabri, where he received the injury to his right eye which ultimately deprived it of sight. His labor was incessant, and his

been surrendered to him by his gallant but vanquished foe on board the San Josef. Norwich will be proud of her trophy when no memory remains of her crapes and bombazines or of the fair forms which wore them. The government, too, made him a rear-admiral of the blue. He was not an idle one; he went to sea in the Theseus surrounded by men whose hearts beat in unison with the pulsations of his own; he twice bombarded Cadiz-lost his right arm before Teneriffe -reposed a while at Bath to recruit his strength

calls a battle, in which he laid the Agamemnon between the Ca Ira and the Censeur, and forced both to yield. The former was large enough to put the Agamemnon in her hold. He was now fully in that vein of conquest which never left him when a French vessel was before him as an antagonist. He now dared to disobey orders when he judged that circumstances authorized him, and he was no bad judge; he had now been engaged one hundred times he was literally the hero of a hundred fights. His ship when docked, in order to be refitted, had neither mast, yard, sail, or rigging, that did not need repair in consequence of the shot she had received; her hull had long been secured by cables sewed around her. Nelson exhibited such discretion in disobeying orders, and success so invariably followed action that resulted from judgment of his own, that at length his admirals ceased to give him any close orders at all. Sir John Jervis left him to act as he thought best; the result was that, in two years, Nelson captured fifty French vessels; and the navy

scoured the Mediterranean, and after a search unparalleled in its nature, and carrying despair to every heart but his own, he came upon the French at Aboukir, and make 1798 forever memorable in England by the well-won victory which he achieved at the Nile. If honors poured on him after the affair at St. Vincent, they descended now in an avalanche. His king made him a peer who among men was peerless. Parliament thanked him; the nation adored him. Russia endowed him with colored ribbands-the sultana stuffed his mouth with sugar-candy-public companies enrolled him among their members. "Nelson-squares," and "streets," and " terraces," arose without number; and curates were weary of christening an endless succession of Horatios. As for Naples, which country he had saved from the very jaws of the French, the people there when he landed nearly killed him with kindness and did all but devour him. The king, queen, and the entire court, kissed his very feet. He turned with something like disgust from all their homage, and his honest

all to himself. He had well-nigh deserved it for the crowning fight at St. Vincent; he was in the thickest of the struggle where the odds against us were twenty-seven to fifteen. It made Jervis an earl and Nelson a knight, and it opened a new era in naval strategy; for never from that day has British captain bent upon victory paused to count his enemy, or deferred his triumph in calculating the disparity of power.

Honors were both lavished on, and conferred by, the frail conqueror of the San Josef and the San Nicholas. Corporations flung their municipal freedoms at his feet, and gave him endless invitations to dinner. The only thing that he ever designated as dreadful was meeting a provincial mayor and aldermen! They voted him more swords than

and they cared as little to keep it from their neighbors; and he brushed away the imprecation on his lips, launched against the Neapolitan ladies, to kiss the hand of Emma Hamilton! But there was a distinction, though we are not going to show where it lay.

From the same year to that which closed the century, 1800, his presence was all but ubiquitous in the Mediterranean, and his name was uttered with awe and reverence all over the world. Within this period he became rear-admiral of the red, and Naples made him Duke of Bronté, in return for his having saved the nation from entire destruction. Within the same period is on record that dark event connected with the name of Carracciolo, to which we will hereafter allude; let