A short hour elapsed between Hardy's leaving the cockpit and his returning to it, which brings the time to four o'clock. Strength had ebbed fast meanwhile, and the end was now very near; but Nelson was still conscious. The friends again shook hands, and the captain, before releasing his grasp, congratulated the dying hero upon the brilliancy of the victory. It was complete, he said. How many were captured, it was impossible to see, but he was certain fourteen or fifteen. The exact number proved to be eighteen. "That is well," said Nelson, but added, faithful to his exhaustive ideas of sufficiency, "I bargained for twenty." Then he exclaimed, "Anchor, Hardy, anchor!" Hardy felt the embarrassment of issuing orders now that Collingwood knew that his chief was in the very arms of death; but Nelson was clearly within his rights. "I suppose, my Lord," said the captain, "Admiral Collingwood will now take upon himself the direction of affairs." "Not while I live, I hope, Hardy," cried Nelson, and for a moment endeavored, ineffectually, to raise himself from the bed. "No. Do you anchor, Hardy." Captain Hardy then said, "Shall we make the signal, Sir?" "Yes," answered the admiral, "for if I live, I'll anchor." These words he repeated several times, even after Hardy had left him, and the energy of his manner showed that for the moment the sense of duty and of responsibility had triumphed over his increasing weakness.

Nelson now desired his steward, who was in attendance throughout, to turn him on his right side. "I wish I had not left the deck," he murmured; "for I shall soon be gone." Thenceforth he sank rapidly; his breathing became oppressed and his voice faint. To Dr. Scott he said, "Doctor, I have not been a great sinner," and after a short pause, "Remember that I leave Lady Hamilton and my daughter Horatia as a legacy to my country-never forget Horatia." This injunction, with remembrances to Lady Hamilton and the child, he frequently repeated; and he charged Scott to see Mr. Rose, and tell him -but here pain interrupted his utterance, and after an interval he simply said, "Mr. Rose will remember," alluding to a letter which he had written him, but which as yet could not have been received. His thirst now increased; and he called for "drink, drink," "fan, fan," and "rub, rub," addressing himself in this last case to Dr. Scott, who had been rubbing his breast with his hand, by which some relief was given. These words he spoke in a very rapid manner, which rendered

his articulation difficult; but he every now and then, with evident increase of pain, made a greater effort, and said distinctly, "Thank God, I have done my duty." This he repeated at intervals as long as the power of speech remained. The last words caught by Dr. Scott, who was bending closely over him, were, "God and my country.". . .

There, surrounded by the companions of his triumph, and by the trophies of his prowess, we leave our hero with his glory. Sharer of our mortal weakness, he has bequeathed to us a type of single-minded self-devotion that can never perish. As his funeral anthem proclaimed, while a nation mourned, "His body is buried in peace, but his Name liveth for evermore." Wars may cease, but the need for heroism shall not depart from the earth, while man remains man and evil exists to be redressed. Wherever danger has to be faced or duty to be done, at cost to self, men will draw inspiration from the name and deeds of Nelson.

INFLUENCE OF GREECE ON ITS PEOPLE.1

BY ERNST CURTIUS.

(From the "History of Greece.")

[ERNST CURTIUS: A German historian and archæologist; born in 1814. He was the founder of the German Institute of Archæology at Athens, and has contributed much to the capital of knowledge concerning life in Ancient Greece. He was a fluent writer, adept in the art of accommodating his style to the character of his readers. He wrote a "Greek History," also a "History of Athens." His "Peloponnesus" deals with the archæological remains in and about that city.]

THE history of a nation is by no means to be regarded solely as a consequence of the natural condition of its local habitations. But thus much it is easy to perceive: a formation of soil as peculiar as that commanding the basin of the Archipelago may well give a peculiar direction to the development of the history of its inhabitants.

In Asia great complexes of countries possess a history common to all of them. There one nation raises itself over a multitude of others, and in every case decrees of fate fall, to which vast regions, with their millions of inhabitants, are uniformly subjected. Against a history of this kind every footbreadth of Greek land rises in protest. There the ramification of the mountains has formed a series of cantons, every one of which has received a natural call and a natural right to a separate existence.

1 By permission of the Publishers, Macmillan & Co., Ltd.

The villagers of wide plains quail at the thought of defending their laws and property against an overpowering force of arms; they submit to what is the will of heaven, and the survivor tranquilly builds himself a new hut near the ruins of the old. But where the land which has been with difficulty cultivated is belted by mountains with lofty ridges and narrow passes, which a little band is able to hold against a multitude, there men receive, together with these weapons of defense, the courage for using them. In the members of every local federation arises the feeling of belonging together by the will and command of God; the common state grows by itself out of the hamlets of the valley; and in every such state there springs up at the same time a consciousness of an independence fully justified before God and man. He who desires to enslave such a land must attack and conquer it anew in every one of its mountain valleys. In the worst case the summits of the mountains and inaccessible caves are able to shelter the remnant of the free inhabitants of the land.

But, besides the political independence, it is also the multiplicity of culture, manners, and language characteristic of Ancient Greece which it is impossible to conceive as existent without the multiplicitous formation of its territory, for without the barriers of the mountains the various elements composing its population would have early lost their individuality by contact with one another.

Now Hellas is not only a secluded and well-guarded country, but, on the other hand, again, more open to commerce than any other country of the ancient world. For from three sides the sea penetrates into all parts of the country; and while it accustoms men's eyes to greater acuteness and their minds to higher enterprise, never ceases to excite their fancy for the sea, which, in regions where no ice binds it during the whole course of the year, effects an incomparably closer union between the lands than is the case with the inhospitable inland seas of the North. If it is easily agitated, it is also easily calmed again; its dangers are diminished by the multitude of safe bays for anchorage, which the mariner may speedily reach at the approach of foul weather. They are further decreased by the transparent clearness of the atmosphere, which allows the mariner at daytime to recognize the guiding points of his course at a distance of as many as twelve miles, and at night spreads over his head a cloudless sky, where the rising and

setting of the stars in peaceful tranquillity regulate the business of peasant and mariner. The winds are the legislators of the weather; but even they, in these latitudes, submit to certain rules, and only rarely rise to the vehemence of desolating hurricanes. Never, except in the short winter season, is there any uncertain irregularity in wind and weather; the commencement of the fair season - the safe months, as the ancients called it brings with it an immutable law followed by the winds in the entire Archipelago: every morning the north wind arises from the coasts of Thrace, and passes over the whole island sea; so that men were accustomed to designate all the regions lying beyond that of these coasts as the side beyond the north wind. This is the wind which once carried Miltiades to Lemnos, and at all times secured advantages of such importance to those who commanded the northern coasts. Often these winds (the Etesian) for weeks together assume the character of a storm, and when the sky is clear waves of froth appear as far as the eye can see; but the winds are regular enough to be free from danger, and they subside at sunset; then the sea becomes smooth, and air and water tranquil, till almost imperceptibly a slight contrary wind arises, a breeze from the south. When the mariner at Ægina be comes aware of this he weighs anchor, and drops into the Piræus in a few hours of the night. This is the sea breeze sung by the poets of antiquity, and now called the Embates, whose approach is ever mild, soft, and salutary. The currents passing along the coasts facilitate navigation in the gulfs and sounds of the sea; the flight of migratory birds, the shoals of tunny fish reappearing at fixed seasons of the year, serve as welcome signs for the mariner. The regularity in the whole life of nature and in the motion of air and sea, the mild and humane character of the Egean, essentially contributed to make the inhabitants of its coast use it with the fullest confidence, and live on and with it.

Men soon learn all the secrets of the art of river navigation. to an end, but never those of navigating the sea; the differences between dwellers on the banks of a river soon vanish by mutual contact, whereas the sea suddenly brings the greatest contrasts together; strangers arrive, who have been living under another sky and according to other laws: there ensues an endless comparing, learning, and teaching, and the more remunerative the interchange of the produce of different countries, the

more restlessly the human mind labors victoriously to oppose the dangers of the sea by a constant succession of new inventions.

The Euphrates and the Nile from year to year offer the same advantages to the population on their banks, and regulate its occupations in a constant monotony, which makes it possible for centuries to pass over the land without any change taking place in the essential habits of the lives of its inhabitants. Revolutions occur, but no development, and mummylike, the civilization of the Egyptians stagnates, enshrouded in the valley of the Nile; they count the monotonous beats of the pendulum of time, but time contains nothing for them; they possess a chronology, but no history in the full sense of the word. Such a death in life is not permitted by the flowing waves of the Ægean, which, as soon as commerce and mental activity have been once awakened, unceasingly continues and develops them.

Lastly, with regard to the natural gifts of the soil, a great difference prevailed between the eastern and western half of the land of Greece. The Athenian had only to ascend a few hours' journey from the mouths of the rivers of Asia Minor to assure himself how much more remunerative agriculture was there, and to admire and envy the deep layers of most fertile soil in Æolis and Ionia. There the growth of both plants and animals manifested greater luxuriance, the intercourse in the wide plains incomparably greater facility. We know how in the European country the plains are only let in between the mountains like furrows or narrow basins, or, as it were, washed on to their extremest ridge; and the single passage from one valley to the other led over lofty ridges, which men were obliged to open up for themselves, and then, with unspeakable labor, to provide with paths for beasts of burden and vehicles. The waters of the plains were equally grudging of the blessings expected from them. Far the greater number of them in summer were driedup rivers, sons of the Nereïdes dying in their youth, according to the version of mythology; and although the drought in the country is incomparably greater now than it was in ancient times, yet, since men remembered, the veins of water of the Ilissus, as well as of the Inachus, had been hidden under a dry bed of pebbles. Yet this excessive drought is again accompanied by a superabundance of water, which, stagnating in one place in the basin of a valley, in another between mountains and sea, renders the air pestiferous and cultivation difficult. Everywhere there was a call for labor and a struggle. And yet at