other people, offered the use of their hospitals for our wounded, pledging the honour of Spain that they should be carefully attended there. When the storm, after the action, drove some of the prizes upon the coast, they declared that the English, who were thus thrown into their hands, should not be considered as prisoners of war; and the Spanish soldiers gave up their own beds to their shipwrecked enemies. The Spanish vice-admiral, Alva, died of his wounds. Villeneuve was sent to England, and permitted to return to France. The French government say that he 10 destroyed himself on the way to Paris, dreading the consequences of a court-martial: but there is every reason to believe that the tyrant, who never acknowledged the loss of the battle of Trafalgar, added Villeneuve to the numerous victims of his murderous policy.

It is almost superfluous to add, that all the honours which a grateful country could bestow were heaped upon the memory of Nelson. His brother was made an earl, with a grant of £6,000 a year; £10,000 were voted to each of his sisters; and £100,000 for the purchase of an estate. A 20 public funeral was decreed, and a public monument. Statues and monuments also were voted by most of our principal cities. The leaden coffin in which he was brought home was cut in pieces, which were distributed as relics of Saint Nelson, so the gunner of the Victory called them ;-and when, at his interment, his flag was about to be lowered into the grave, the sailors, who assisted at the ceremony, with one accord rent it in pieces, that each might preserve a fragment while he lived.

The death of Nelson was felt in England as something 30 more than a public calamity: men started at the intelligence, and turned pale; as if they had heard of the loss of a dear friend. An object of our admiration and affection, of our pride and of our hopes, was suddenly taken from us; and it seemed as if we had never, till then, known how deeply we loved and reverenced him. What the country

had lost in its great naval hero-the greatest of our own, and of all former times, was scarcely taken into the account of grief. So perfectly, indeed, had he performed his part, that the maritime war, after the battle of Trafalgar, was considered at an end the fleets of the enemy were not merely defeated, but destroyed: new navies must be built, and a new race of seamen reared for them, before the possibility of their invading our shores could again be contemplated. It was not, therefore, from any selfish reflection upon the 10 magnitude of our loss that we mourned for him: the general sorrow was of a higher character. The people of England grieved that funeral ceremonies, and public monuments, and posthumous rewards were all that they could now bestow upon him, whom the king, the legislature, and the nation, would have alike delighted to honour; whom every tongue would have blessed; whose presence in every village through which he might have passed would have wakened the church bells, have given schoolboys a holiday, have drawn children from their sports to gaze upon him, and "old men from the 20 chimney corner," to look upon Nelson ere they died. The victory of Trafalgar was celebrated, indeed, with the usual forms of rejoicing, but they were without joy; for such already was the glory of the British navy, through Nelson's surpassing genius, that it scarcely seemed to receive any addition from the most signal victory that ever was achieved upon the seas and the destruction of this mighty fleet, by which all the maritime schemes of France were totally frustrated, hardly appeared to add to our security or strength; for, while Nelson was living, to watch the combined squad30 rons of the enemy, we felt ourselves as secure as now, when they were no longer in existence.

There was reason to suppose, from the appearances upon opening the body, that, in the course of nature, he might have attained, like his father, to a good old age. Yet he cannot be said to have fallen prematurely whose work was done; nor ought he to be lamented, who died so full of

honours, and at the height of human fame. The most triumphant death is that of the martyr; the most awful that of the martyred patriot; the most splendid that of the hero in the hour of victory and if the chariot and the horses of fire had been vouchsafed for Nelson's translation, he could scarcely have departed in a brighter blaze of glory. He has left us, not indeed his mantle of inspiration, but a name and an example, which are at this hour inspiring thousands of the youth of England: a name which is our pride, and an example which will continue to be our shield and our 10 strength. Thus it is that the spirits of the great and the wise continue to live and to act after them; verifying, in this sense, the language of the old mythologist :

Τοι μὲν δαίμονες εἰσι, Διὸς μεγάλου διὰ βουλᾶς

Εσθλοὶ, ἐπιχθόνιοι, φυλακὲς θνητῶν ἀνθρώπων.

NOTES.

[N.B. The student while reading this book is strongly recommended always to have beside him an open Atlas in which to look out for himself all the places mentioned in the narrative of Nelson's life.]

CHAPTER I.

Page 1, line 2. A parsonage or parsonage house is a house in which a parish priest lives. Just as a parish priest or parson may be either a rector or a vicar, a parsonage may be either a rectory or a vicarage. As Nelson's father was a rector (a priest who receives the predial tithes from land as well as the smaller tithes derived from animals), the parsonage in which Nelson spent his childhood was a rectory. A vicar only receives the smaller tithes, the predial tithes, when the clergyman is a vicar, being appropriated by a layman or by an ecclesiastical body.

1. 4. The maiden name, etc. Nelson's mother before her marriage was a Miss Suckling.

1. 5. Sir Robert Walpole (b. 1676, d. 1745), a celebrated Whig statesman, was first Lord of the Treasury for twenty years, from 1721 to 1741, in the reigns of George I. and George II. Sir is a title prefixed to the Christian names of knights and baronets. Foreigners often make the mistake of prefixing Sir to surnames, as Sir Walpole.

1. 6. The first Lord Walpole could not have been Nelson's godfather as he died in 1757. Nelson's godfather was Horatio, second Lord Walpole. Godfathers at baptism promise to attend to a child's religious education.

1. 9. widower is an instance of a masculine formed from a feminine. As wives who have lost their husbands are a commoner subject of conversation than husbands who have lost their wives, the word widow' (from a root meaning 'bereft,' connected with the Latin viduus) was first used to express a woman bereft of her husband. After widow' in this sense had come into general use, the masculine form 'widower' was formed

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from it by adding the masculine suffix er to the feminine form. Compare the etymology of 'bridegroom,' 'drake' and 'gander.'

1. 13. Raisonnable, Fr. for reasonable. As Capt. Suckling's ship had a French name, it had probably been captured from the French. Other ships belonging to the English navy with French names were the Tonnant and the Spartiate, both of which were captured at the Nile and fought on the English side at Trafalgar. See also p. 81, 1. 16; p. 103, l. 8; p. 154, 1. 1; p. 253, 1. 28; p. 263, 1. 24.

1. 14. Do. The simple imperative 'write' would give an order. 'Do write' makes a request which the petitioner earnestly desires to obtain.

p. 2, 1. 3. his circumstances were straitened, he was so poor that he found it difficult to pay the expenses of himself and his family.

1. 9. he would climb to the very top of the tree, he would rise to the highest rank.

1. 13. rough it out, go through hardships. 'Out' is here an adverb meaning 'to the end.’ It' is used as a kind of cognate object with some nouns and adjectives used as verbs. Compare "boat it," p. 185, 1. 3.

1. 15. provide for him. To provide for a person is to supply him with the means of subsistence, so that he may no longer be dependent for his maintenance on his friends and relations. Here the phrase is used humorously on the ground that when he was dead his father would have to undergo no further trouble or expense in order to maintain him.

1. 19. at that time. Owing to the draining of marsh lands ague was less prevalent in the beginning of the nineteenth century than it had been when Nelson was a boy. The disease has become still less common in England since Southey's time. Here 'a' stands for the preposition

1. 24. a bird's-nesting. 'on' or 'an.'

1. 25. elapsed, past by.

1. 28. gipsies. The gipsies or gypsies are a nomadic people found under various names in different European countries. In England they are called gypsies, because they were supposed to be Egyptians by descent. It is however more probable that they came originally from India, as many of the words in their language are evidently derived from that country. For instance they call water and hair respectively pani and bal, both of which are Indian words in common use at the present day.

1. 34. I never saw fear. The word 'saw' shows that the child did not know what the word 'fear' meant, but thought it was a