for the murderous usage which they had suffered at their hands. Such was their earnestness, and such the implicit confidence which could be placed in Spanish honor, that the offer was accepted, and they were actually stationed at the lower-deck guns.

Dumanoir and his squadron were not more fortunate than the fleet from whose destruction they fled; they fell in with Sir Richard Strachan, who was cruising for the Rochefort squadron, and were all taken. In the better days of France, if such a crime could then have been committed, it would have received an exemplary punishment from the French government; under Bonaparte it was sure of impunity, and perhaps might be thought deserving of reward. But if the Spanish court had been independent, it would have become us to have delivered Dumanoir and his captains up to Spain, that they might have been brought to trial and hanged in sight of the remains of the Spanish fleet.

The total British loss in the battle of Trafalgar amounted to 1,587. Twenty of the enemy struck, but it was not possible to anchor the fleet, as Nelson had enjoined. A gale came on from the southwest; some of the prizes went down, some went on shore, one effected its escape into Cadiz, others were destroyed; four only were saved, and those by the greatest exertions. The wounded Spaniards were sent ashore, an assurance being given that they should not serve till regularly exchanged; and the Spaniards, with a generous feeling which would not perhaps have been found in any other people, offered the use of their hospitals for our wounded, pledging the honor 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, Alava, died of his wounds. Villeneuve was sent to England and permitted to return to France. The French government say that he 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 honors 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 per year; £10,000 were voted to each of his sisters; and £100,ooo for the purchase of an estate.1 A 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 St. 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 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

1 “The name of the estate thus purchased was changed from Stanlynch to Trafalgar; and the total sums granted by Parliament to Lord Nelson's family were £2,000 per annum to his widow for life; £5,000 per annum forever to the person who might succeed to the earldom of Nelson;

...

£99,000 for the purchase of an estate which is annexed to the title; and £15,000 to each of his sisters. Yet of all these splendid gifts, not one shilling was bestowed upon either of the two individuals whom Nelson loved above all other human beings, one of them his own child, and whom in the most affecting words he had solemnly bequeathed to his country." (SIR N. H. NICOLAS.)

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 magnitude of our loss that we mourned for him; the general sorrow was of a higher character.

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The people of England grieved that funeral ceremonies, public monuments, and posthumous rewards were all which they could now bestow upon him whom the King, the legislature, and the nation would alike have delighted to honor; 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 chimney corner 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 squadrons of the enemy we felt ourselves as secure as now, when they are 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 honors 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 1 had been vouchsafed for Nelson's translation, he could scarcely have departed in a brighter blaze of glory. He 1 2 Kings ii. 11-13.

has left us not, indeed, his mantle of inspiration, but a name and an example which are at this hour inspiring hundreds of the youth of England, a name which is our pride, and an example which will continue to be our shield and our 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 :

Τοὶ μὲν δαίμονές εἰσι, Διὸς μεγάλου διὰ βουλάς

Ἐσθλοὶ, επιχθόνιοι, φύλακες θνητῶν ἀνθρῶπων.1

1 They are good angels, through the will of mighty Zeus, living upon earth, guardians of mortal men. (HESIOD'S Works and Days, lines 122, 123.)

APPENDIX.

MEMOIR OF NELSON'S SERVICES.

WRITTEN BY HIMSELF.

PORT MAHON, October 15, 1799.

HORATIO NELSON, son of the Rev. Edmund Nelson, rector of Burnham Thorpe, in the county of Norfolk, and of Catherine, his wife, daughter of Dr. Suckling, prebendary of Westminster, whose grandmother was sister of Sir Robert Walpole, Earl of Oxford.

I was born September 29, 1758, in the parsonage house; was sent to the high school at Norwich, and afterwards removed to North Walsham, from whence, on the disturbance with Spain relative to the Falkland Islands, I went to sea with my uncle, Captain Maurice Suckling, in the Raisonnable, of 64 guns. But the business with Spain being accommodated, I was sent in a West India ship, belonging to Hibbert, Purrier, and Horton, with Mr. John Rathbone, who had formerly been in the navy in the Dreadnought with Captain Suckling. From this voyage I returned to the Triumph, at Chatham, in July, 1772; and if I did not improve in my education, I came back a practical seaman, with a horror of the royal navy, and with a saying then constant with seamen, "Aft the most honor, forward the best man!" It was many weeks before I got in the least reconciled to a man-of-war, so deep was the prejudice rooted; and what pains were taken to instill this erroneous principle in a young mind!

However, as my ambition was to be a seaman, it was always held out as a reward, that if I attended well to my navigation, I should go in the cutter and decked longboat, which was attached to the commanding officer's ship at Chatham. Thus by degrees I became a good pilot, for vessels of that description, from Chatham to the Tower of London down to the Swin and the North Foreland, and confident of myself

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