Doubtless, Dibdin’s music was better than Boswell’s words—it could not be worse. Johnson confined himself simply to literary criticism. ‘My illustrious friend,’ Boswell remarks, said, “It is very well, sir, but you should not swear.” Upon which, I altered “Oh by my soul” to “Alas, alas!”’

It was in this year, 1769, that Dibdin lifted Sedaine’s ‘Deserter’ to the English stage, after which all the sweet throats in town were warbling ‘Somehow, my spindle I mislaid.’ Just ninety-nine years ago this last month of August, Dibdin produced ‘The Waterman,’ which has now entered its hundredth year, and which is as fresh as a pure flood-tide on a bright morning. Many of us may remember having seen in our childhood the original Tom Tug, for Bannister lived half a century after he created the part. And what a whole crew of Tom Tugs have warbled on the boards and concert-room since then! Do you remember, on Edmund Kean’s benefit, June 3rd, 1822, how touchingly he sang ‘Farewell, my trim-built wherry’? Can you not see Braham, so like an amateur waterman? Can you not hear him so like something sweetly superhuman, trilling forth, ‘And have you not heard of a jolly young waterman?’ Only a few nights ago we saw the piece and heard the songs, and were tempted to say as Ophelia says about the things that had been and the things that be. It is ninety-eight years since Dibdin himself, as Solomon, sang his own song, ‘The lads of the village shall merrily, ha!’ in ‘The Quaker,’ and it remains an exquisite song still, but it demands an exquisite voice and tact in the singer.

Charles had a way of his own in adapting French musical pieces to the English stage. He took the pieces, but he fitted them with music by himself. After all, this sort of thing has been done by composers with reference to other composers of the same country. There was, for instance, a ‘Barber of Seville,’ by Paisiello. Well, Rossini appropriated the story, composed his own fresh and immortal music for it, and extinguished Paisiello’s barber for ever. When Dibdin brought out ‘Rose and Colin,’ a piece which had been ‘set’ by Philidor, he was asked why he had not retained the clever Frenchman’s sparkling music. ‘Because,’ answered Charles, ‘Philidor is famous enough, and I have a reputation of my own to make!’ Philidor’s reputation is now more connected with chess (for he was the Philidor) than with music. Nevertheless, he is bracketed with Duni and Monsigny as one of the founders of modern comic French opera; and the song for Medusa, in his opera of ‘Persée,’ ‘J’ai perdu la beauté qui me rendait si vaine,’ remains a masterpiece of harmony. Philidor was better known than Dibdin himself, in London, where he died, indifferent that Charles and others were ‘stealing his thunder,’ with the reputation of being one of the best-tempered, most upright, and most disinterested men that ever lived.

From 1765 to 1775 was Dibdin’s best time in connection with the drama. Subsequently he became erratic. He was proprietor, manager, at the head of a company, or constituting a whole company in himself, now with audiences, now sadly in want of them: now flourishing like a prince, living like three, and falling into bankruptcy and rheumatic gout. He has given an account of his wanderings, in which there is an incident or two worth the telling, when they refer to musical or to theatrical matters. From this book we learn that Shuter had an amusingly sententious critical way with him. When Reddish (George Canning’s stepfather) first played Posthumus (in ‘Cymbeline’), Shuter simply remarked, ‘Henceforth, let every villain be called Posthumus Leonatus.’ And, being asked what he thought of Macklin’s Macbeth, he solemnly replied: ‘The time has been that when the brains were out the man would die, and there an end!’

One day, when Dibdin was near the Land’s End, he passed through a village where he saw several men carrying books and instruments to church. To his questions, they replied that they were going to practise for the Sunday service. ‘Very good,’ said sympathising Charley; ‘and whose music do you sing?’ ‘Oh, Handel, Handel!’ was the rather bold answer of the leader of the choir. ‘Handel!’ rejoined Dibdin, in much amazement; ‘don’t you find him a leetle difficult?’ ‘Well,’ replied the Cornish minstrel, ‘we did at first; but, you see, we altered him, and so we get on very well with him now.’ Charles, who hated Garrick and despised Handel, changed the scene of his dramatic incident to Bath; but it was originally told of the Cornish singers.

It was principally for Dibdin’s own entertainments, not for ‘Dibdin at Home,’ that he wrote and composed his famous sea-songs. How Dibdin came to write and compose sea-songs is accounted for by a tradition. Among the crew of a ship which came into Southampton Water was a cabin-boy who, disgusted with the tyranny of which he was daily the subject, took the first opportunity to escape. The boy remained hid in Southampton till his ship had sailed, and then he appeared in the streets singing naval ditties for bread. The lad sang so sweetly that people got interested in him. His name, he said, was Incledon, and he came from near the Land’s End, Cornwall. Dibdin and Incledon became known to each other, and the Cornish cabin-boy furnished the naval properties which the Hampshire poet put into his naval songs.

But this yarn won’t hold water. Incledon, the silvery-toned son of a Cornish doctor, was articled to the celebrated composer, Jackson of Exeter, at eight years of age. The boy was the petted favourite of the musical people of Exeter for about seven years. At the end of that time, weary of the cathedral choir discipline, for which town popularity could not compensate, Incledon, in 1779, entered as a common sailor on board the Formidable. He served in the West Indies, took part in hard fighting, and, after the lapse of about four years, he determined to go upon the stage as a singer. It was about the year 1783 that Incledon made his first appearance in Southampton and on its stage, at which time some of the best of Dibdin’s sea-songs had long been familiar in the public ear. In 1790 Incledon first appeared in London, as Dermot in ‘The Poor Soldier,’ and for thirty subsequent years he shared with Braham the glory of being the first of English melodists. No one ever did, or ever will, sing Stevens’s ‘Storm,’ or Andrew Cherry’s ‘Bay of Biscay,’ as Incledon sang them and other manly songs; and no couple of vocalists ever did or ever will sing as Braham (Valentine) and Incledon (Fitzwalter) sang the former’s important duet, ‘All’s Well’ to Tom Dibdin’s words. There was so much of the sea in Tom’s songs that some of the best have been frequently attributed to his father.

It was lucky for that father and the nation that he quarrelled with managers, wrote, sang, and played on his own hook, and composed the naval ditties especially, that will make his name last till the New Zealander seats himself on the ruined arch of London Bridge. These songs caused Dibdin to be a power in the country, and his services were not altogether without acknowledgment. Pitt encouraged and paid him to write, sing, publish, and give away loyal war-songs in the old fighting time—testimony enough of the minstrel’s value. George III. rewarded his loyalty by granting him a pension, of which a succeeding Addington ministry deprived him. The bust of the skilled son of song was appropriately placed in Greenwich Hospital, where the singer himself might as appropriately have found a home. Lord Minto patronised an edition of Dibdin’s songs for the use of the navy. They have not been quite slap-banged out of use by the crapulous music-halls. At public dinners far better than the meat is it to hear Ransford sing ‘Yeo heave ho!’ or Donald King ‘Tom Bowling’—the touching monody to the author’s good brother the captain of an East Indiaman. It is said that our Queen conferred a small pension on Dibdin’s suffering daughter, a lady honourably connected with literature. If this be true, let us be glad that all literary annuities, if we may so speak, are not granted to persons far too well off to require them—or to receive them, one would suppose, without a sense of humiliation.

The religion of Charles Dibdin’s sailors ebbs and flows like the sea, and that even in one song. Take, for instance, ‘Poor Jack,’ which has been praised on the very ground of its religious beauty. In the first verse Jack has more comfort than faith. He is careless, on the chance of others caring for him:—

In the second verse Jack has heard the chaplain palaver one day, ‘about souls, heaven, mercy, and such.’ It was, Jack says, as unintelligible to him as high Dutch. Nevertheless, Jack got at some instruction from the reverend gentleman:—

In the next verse Jack is worldly again. When Poll is ‘sniv’ling and piping her eye’ at the idea of parting from him, he says tenderly—and we can hear the voice of T. P. Cooke saying it—‘Why, what a damn’d fool you must be!’ Then comes the change in his religious philosophy:—

Perhaps he ‘may laughing come back,’ and he supports this doctrine of chances by means of the doctrine of election, in the figure of the cherub up aloft with his protective power over Jack; and which cherub, in the last verse, is commissioned, at the end of all things, to ‘look out a good berth’ for the same theological sailor.

To be sure, such loose theology was to be expected in sailors who had such chaplains to teach them, as Dibdin delineates in another of his songs, ‘There’s nothing like grog’:—

At a time when old English ballads are supposed to portray English history, we may point to the above as untruly reflecting naval manners in England in the last century. It is more of a caricature than a naval scene in a pantomime, and the morality is as ‘shaky’ as that in another ballad, ‘When faintly gleams the doubtful day,’ where humanity in hunting matters is illustrated by hunting the hare to the point of death, but then protecting ‘the defenceless creature’ by calling off ‘the well-taught hounds:’—

Again, of the fox it is said, ‘Unpitied shall the culprit die’:—

as if the quelling was not the last thought of squires who breed foxes. It was very good policy of Dibdin to teach that ‘Every bullet has its billet,’ but in ‘A sailor and an honest heart’ war’s dangers are the sailor’s chances, and his philosophy is to ask no more than ‘grog aboard and girl ashore.’

Ben Backstay and Anna piping their eyes at parting are but sickly sentimentalities. Bill Bobstay, with his purse always open and his veins to the same tune, shedding his blood for the king, is like the stagiest of stage sailors; and Jack Rattlin heaving a sigh as he sits on the ‘pendant yard,’ and dying for love, with his eyes uplifted, when he comes down from it, is not the man who could hand, reef, and steer better than any mate afloat. Indeed Dibdin’s sailors in love are generally great spooneys; in ‘The Boatswain calls’ there is a whole shipload of them. Fancy an entire crew heaving ‘fervent sighs’ as they leave looking at the girls ashore, to turn for consolation to the windlass with ‘Yo heave ho!’ But even these soft ones are to be preferred to the tipplers who declare that ‘the best sort of sounding is sounding the bowl.’ The best side of Dibdin’s philosophy is where he metrically teaches that ‘a brave British sailor should never despair,’ and pays a compliment to the bold royal tar, the Duke of Clarence, who got it made into a law that ‘each tar of his rhino should have his full share,’ and should no more be cheated of his pay, as he used to be. But there was a lack of sincerity in most of Dibdin’s sentimental sea-maxims for sailors, and for one who is cheered in dying for love there are a dozen who are encouraged to find in every port a wife:—

To our thinking, Charles Dibdin, celebrated as he was for his sea songs, deserves far higher praise for quite another sort of country song, of which we will give an example. His sailors are too much addicted, when storms rage and billows roll, to sling the flowing bowl; landsmen might fancy that Jack’s life consisted of thinking of Nancy afloat, hugging her ashore, drinking to her health unceasingly, and taking a turn of duty with a hornpipe sort of air, as if the galleries were clapping him enthusiastically. It is all good and picturesque in its way, but tuneful Charley is more to our liking when he gets into an English corn-field, strolls down an English lane, or sits at the door of an English cottage. He is then as natural as Moreland treating the same subjects on canvas. The fragrance of the fields comes on the wings of his song, and his English home and peasant are still more truly English than his English ships and sailors. Take, for example:—

THE LABOURER’S WELCOME HOME.

Here the pictures are perfect; each is in its way a little Bewick. If there is once or twice a slight roughness in the metre, it is such as may be met with in Cowley; and if the introduction of ‘lares’ at an English hearth startles us a little, it is just such surprises as come upon us in Cowley and the poets of his time. The charm of the above song is greatly enhanced by the music. We have no such songs nor any such music for English people generally in these days. Music-hall ruffianism woos the public ear with beastly innuendo, worse than downright speaking, and the Hurlingham husseydoms, after assisting at the butchery of doves, talk music-hall slang and play Champagne Charley quadrilles.

Let us now add a word respecting another child of song, born in Southampton, and still living when Charles Dibdin came there into the world—Isaac Watts. Isaac Watts and Charles Dibdin! Why not? They are not so far apart as you may think. Isaac, the Southampton Nonconformist schoolmaster’s son, lived from 1674, reign of Charles the Second, to 1748, reign of the second George. Charles Dibdin was, at the latter period, three years old. The piety of Watts is no more questionable than the loyalty of Dibdin. Watts upheld piety by simple means in an impious age. Dibdin sustained loyalty at a time when revolutionary ideas were struggling into activity at home, and when there were enemies abroad who found moral support in such a struggle. If Dibdin’s allegiance found occasionally exaggerated expression, so Watts’s piety sometimes found a rather arrogant utterance. Dibdin, however, was—strange as it may appear—more humble and contented than Watts. In a ballad in ‘The Old Woman of Eighty,’ Dibdin makes a crowd of poor unlearned country folk sing:—

Therein is Christian philosophy with content. Watts makes his well-born Christian child an insufferable prig, who would have scorned Dibdin’s half-starved wretch; for example, in the ‘Praise for Mercies’:—

In Dibdin’s ‘True Courage’ Bob Bounce is ready to eat an enemy alive, but the minstrel humanises him, and inculcates the maxim that all men are brothers:—

This may be rough morality, but it is of better quality than the following selfish sample in Watts:

While Dibdin’s Tom or Jack is for ever seeing, after his fashion, a merciful Providence, Watts’s model child can discern only one armed with terrors and tortures. Isaac had no idea of one of Charley’s ‘sweet little cherubs’ sitting aloft watchful to preserve; the Nonconformist’s feverish eye beheld only a demon:—

In the sailor’s philosophy all is harmony; but Watts finds discord where other men find none. Jack does not believe that ‘dogs delight to bark and bite,’ nor that ‘God hath made them so.’ A pat on the head from a master’s hand is the supreme delight of the ever-faithful dog. And if ‘bears and lions growl and fight,’ it is not that ‘it is their nature to;’ any more, at least, than it is the nature of man. It was Nelson who told the young midshipman, as part of his duties, to ‘hate a Frenchman like the devil!’ Dibdin only allowed such feeling in the heat and fury of battle:—

Watts is always readiest with unpleasant figures. Ordinary parents forgive lovingly the faults of children, but Watts tells each little angelic rebel that—

Moreover, Watts forgets grace, occasionally, for chance, as in the couplet:—

Watts’s intentions were as honest as Dibdin’s, and both, no doubt, often erred; but the silversmith’s son was never so loose in logic, philosophy, truth, and metre, as the dwarfish son of the schoolmaster is in the sample just given. It must have been some such sample that soured the spirit of ‘bold Bradbury,’ another dissenting minister, who suspected Watts of not being a good Trinitarian. Once Bradbury’s clerk gave out one of Watts’s hymns, to be sung before the sermon. The minister looked down from the pulpit and said: ‘No, sir, none of Watts’s whims here, if you please.’ In one of the anniversaries of 1688 Bradbury sang, at a public dinner, ‘The Roast Beef of Old England!’ Had he lived long enough he would have sung with equally loyal zest, Tom Dibdin’s famous anti-invasion song, ‘The tight little Island.’

We are not disposed to touch upon Dibdin’s domestic story. A good deal is said in the words that his children loved, honoured, and reverenced their mother. His life led him too much, too far, and too long away from home for the fine domestic sympathies to have ardent play. Even before his melancholy death in 1814, his sons, Charles and Thomas, had distinguished themselves, but they lacked the grace and power of musical composition so remarkable in the father. But in dramatic composition they were his equals, and Tom especially was nearly equal with, though not so prolific as, his father in song-writing.

How Charles the younger caught the ‘trick’ of his father may be seen in a song (published as his in ‘My Spouse and I’), of which here is one stanza:—

It was the old Dibdin philosophy of ‘Never say die.’

Tom Dibdin is generally supposed to have adopted the stage for a profession only after he had tried another calling—apprentice to an upholsterer. This is not quite correct. Tom made his first appearance on the stage before he went to school. He acted, or, rather, represented, Cupid in a pageant in which Mrs. Siddons sat as the goddess Venus. As the great actress took him in hand to rectify his dress, little Tom heard the first words from her lips that ever fell on his ear. They were directed to a female dresser, and they were solemnly enunciated: ‘Ma’am, could you favour me with a pin?’ Tom, as he sat at her feet in the pageant, felt a sort of stage-fright, but Sarah kept him under control by repeated murmured promises that if he were a good boy there was barley-sugar in store for him.

As an upholsterer’s apprentice Tom vexed his master’s soul and injured all his materials. The lad was barely eighteen when he made his plunge into the drama. Only the other day, we looked with interest on the front of the old Eastbourne Theatre, in the centre of the village, away from the modern sea-town. It has still, or had a little while ago, a dramatic-looking exterior. Richland, one of the managing partners of the house, had a nephew, a handsome lad of fourteen years of age, who printed the bills, did general business, and was called ‘Little Jerrold.’ When little Jerrold got to York as a manager, he put a fine handle to his name, and was thenceforth known for some time as Mr. Fitz-Jerrold. Tom Dibdin proposed to come out at the Eastbourne Theatre as Norval. Jerrold, on preparing the play-bill, asked him in what name Tom intended to appear. Dibdin replied, ‘My name is Norval!’ ‘I know it is,’ said Jerrold, ‘on the Grampian hills, but what is it in Sussex?’ The name adopted was Merchant. After all, instead of ‘journeying with this intent,’ and playing Norval, Dibdin ‘gilded his humble name’ by playing Valentine, in one of his father’s numerous musical pieces, and singing ‘Poor Jack,’ to the delight of the Eastbourne audience. The handsome Jerrold above alluded to was the father of Douglas Jerrold, whom John Kemble, as Rolla, once carried on his shoulder as Cora’s child, and who ended his career too early, leaving behind him a reputation for wit second to none.

The most amusing portion of Tom Dibdin’s reminiscences are the illustrations of social as well as dramatic life with which it abounds.

Tom belonged to one of those Beef Steak Clubs (this one was theatrical) which seem never to have had the dish on the table from which the name was supposed to be derived. One of their intellectual sports consisted in a member naming an actor, and then calling on another member for a quotation which should be applicable to the actor named. In this way some one named Incledon, whose talk was a bubbling talk, interlarded with ‘my boy,’ and ‘my dear boy,’ as is the traditionary manner with familiar players still. Incledon being named, Const, the magistrate, being called upon, instantly quoted the line ‘Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing.’ Nothing could be apter. Then another member, naming George Frederick Cooke, called on Irish Johnstone for the illustration, and Jack, without hesitation, enunciated ‘Load o’ whisky,’ giving this appropriate turn to the name of an operatic drama then in vogue—‘Lodoiska.’ Emery was once called upon in connection with his own name; but he was tired and embarrassed, and at length he stammered forth, apologetically, ‘Indeed, indeed, sirs, but this troubles me!’ unconscious that he had fulfilled all conditions, and had illustrated himself in a line from Shakespeare.

These intellectual exercises were not confined to the ‘Beef Steaks.’ There was in Tom Dibdin’s days a certain ‘Ad Libitum Club,’ where the intellect was as much exercised as the more sensual appetites were liberally gratified by supper and punch. At these jovial meetings, some one happening to name an individual in course of conversation, would be met by a cry of ‘Skull!’ which implied that the member was to consider the individual dead, if he were not so already; at all events, he was to furnish on the instant that individual’s rhymed epitaph. Tom Dibdin once chanced to refer to Isaac Read, the scholar and antiquary. The cry of ‘Skull’ was immediately raised, and Tom as instantaneously replied to it as follows:—

On another occasion Tom, without thinking of the consequences, made some allusion to the materials for writing his own life. He was, in one breath, pronounced to be dead, and with the cry of ‘Skull!’ he was challenged to recite his own epitaph. It was furnished in the lively style that follows:—

While on the subject of epitaphs we may as well give a sample of Tom’s father in this department of literature. The following, penned in all seriousness, is to be found in Lee churchyard, near Blackheath, the tribute of Charley to Parsons, the comic actor:—

Thomas Frognall Dibdin, son of ‘Tom Bowling,’ seems to have been early influenced by a desire to show that the Dibdin power of rhyming was in him as well as in his cousins. In 1797 Booker published his ‘Poems.’

Two years after this mild flirtation of the reverend cousin with the Muses, Tom Dibdin made an adaptation from ‘Kotzebue,’ and brought it out with songs, as ‘Of Age To-morrow.’ Our then young grandmothers were soon singing Miss de Camp’s song, ‘Oh no, my Love, no!’ and juvenile actors were all longing to come out in Bannister’s part of Frederick, Baron Willmhurst. Miss de Camp had come from the sawdust of the Surrey Circus, to charm the town; and when she was Mrs. Charles Kemble she became the mother of Fanny Kemble.

They are all gone, these Dibdins, of whom Charles of Southampton was the one whose fame will be the most lasting. Like all men, he is to be judged by his best. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link; a boiler is only as thick as its thinnest part; but a poet is to be measured by his best—the best teachings of the best of his poetry. By this standard the oldest of the Dibdins will rank foremost among those bards and minstrels who have swept the harp and raised the voice to quicken human trust in God, to fan into flame the slumbering but never dead fire of patriotism, and to inculcate loyalty to the powers that be. Dibdin taught perseverance in well-doing with the fervour of a St. Paul, and if he allowed a little too much of the bowl, he was earnest in upholding, when serious, courage and honesty in man, and undying fidelity to woman.

When the youngest of the vocal, musical, and dramatic Dibdins died, in 1841, some one was found to fling, as it were, a stanza or two of sympathy on his tomb. From some lines, called ‘Poor Tom,’ dated from Vienna and printed in the ‘Bath Journal,’ we take the last eight to close our article:—

HORATIO NELSON AND EMMA HAMILTON.

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 boy, 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 valour of Byng without 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 honours 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 splendour 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 half-way between the time, when Roundheads were assailing cavaliers and royalty; and the present period, when democracy, more despotic than any aristocracy, is again howling at palace gates and the hearths of nobles. In his own days the same struggle was going on; but the scene of the struggle was not now within our boundary of home. He was the great champion of royalty, and never had crowned king 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 that 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.

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. A 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 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 commission, 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 honours 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, for the following year saw him in the old French Albemarle, 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) in 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 narrow-minded 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 constitution—who 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 ill-tempered. 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.

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. Sir 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 ardent feelings were soon interested in Nelson.

From this period we must speak more generally of Nelson’s great deeds that we may have fuller space to treat of matters less known, and in the 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 Calvi, where he received the injury to his right eye which ultimately deprived it of sight. His labour was incessant and his health most wretched; but he was too busy to be invalided. ‘The plan I pursue (said he) is never to employ a doctor;’ and, consequently, though he was ill, he kept himself from the peril of growing worse. In 1795 he had his first ‘brush’ with the French fleet. He thus modestly calls a battle, in which he laid the Agamemnon between the Ça 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 authorised him, and he was no bad judge. He had by this time 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 itself, under Jervis and his pale captain, became perfectly invincible. Up to 1797 victory followed victory: there was abundance of honour and salt-beef; but neither prize-money nor even notice in the ‘Gazette.’ He consoled himself by saying that he would one day have a ‘Gazette’ of his own and 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 except Lord Gambier at Aix.

Honours were both lavished on, and conferred by, the frail conqueror of the San Josef and the San Nicolas. 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 alderman! They voted him more swords than he could ever hope to employ; but they were all outweighed by that which he himself presented to the Corporation of Norwich—the sword which had 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 bombazeens or of the fair forms that wore them. The Government, too, made him rear-admiral of the blue. He was not an idle one: he went to sea in the Theseus surrounded by men whose hearts, though turbulent, beat in unison with the pulsations of his own: he twice bombarded Cadiz—lost his right arm before Teneriffe—reposed awhile at Bath to recruit his strength—received some pecuniary reward for the loss of it; and, after publicly thanking the Almighty for all His mercies and acknowledging the lightness of His visitations, was again entrusted to save his country by destroying the then enemies of all mankind. With a squadron of observation he 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 made 1798 for ever memorable in England by the well-won victory which he achieved at the Nile. If honours 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 coloured 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 tongue confessed that he despised those whom it was his duty to save, and that he loathed in his very soul the entire court, if not the universal people. He designated the men as scoundrels: the women were what the author of the old ballad of ‘Nancy Dawson’ says that well-known lady was, and they cared as little to keep it from their neighbours; 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 it suffice to say here that after sweeping the Mediterranean of the enemies of England, and doing a world of good to those who were not worthy of being reckoned her friends—after executing all entrusted to him to accomplish, and rendering the name of England a tower of strength and pride throughout the world—Nelson returned home across Europe. He did not set out without first writing a sensible letter to the Pope, whom he had restored to Rome, in better fashion than Oudinot lately followed in behalf of Pio Nono. According to the prophecy of honest old Father M’Cormick, Nelson may be said to have taken Rome with his ships—a feat of which he reminds the Pope and remains his ‘very obedient servant.’ That his progress from Leghorn to Hamburgh was one of such triumph as the world had never seen may be readily believed; for no human being had ever deserved such ovation. When he landed at Yarmouth the earth seemed to heave to salute him. Myriads of men blessed him, wept over him, hailed him with shouts—in the warmth of their welcome they did all but pay him divine honours. And his wife—how did she spring forward in exultation and enduring love, impatient to meet the boat that bore her heroic husband? Alas! Lady Nelson was quietly awaiting his arrival at Nerot’s hotel in town, and so cold and unsatisfactory was her greeting when the idol of the nation stepped into her presence that the incense of London adulation must have proved savoury by comparison.

Ere he had leisure to sun his laurels he was again afloat, and in the first year of the present century he passed the wild and stormy steep of Elsinore. The battle was a Titanic struggle, and giants of the same blood grappled with each other. Equal was the valour, and if our compelled rather than willing foes had the advantage in means of assault the better wisdom was ours, without which prowess is but a flail apt to wound the skull of him who wields it. The battle of the Baltic, so gigantically fought and inimitably won, placed on Nelson’s brow the coronet of a viscount; but he did not quit the Baltic until he had fluttered the Russian fleet at Revel, and, when he returned to give a report of his mission accomplished, England already needed him for the fulfilment of another. Napoleon was at Boulogne, and, with a French army, threatening invasion. What the feeling of the times was in the parsonages on the Sussex coast—is it not written in the letters of Peter Plimley? What Nelson’s feelings were may be divined from that saying of his, that the French might come any way they pleased, but that they should not come by sea! England trusted him, and he kept his word as far as in him lay. If he did not destroy the Boulogne flotilla, he at least demonstrated that it could not issue from harbour without his permission nor put out to sea without being destroyed. Boulogne has, in some degree, benefited by the rough messengers which he flung into the port as visiting cards to intimate that he and his followers were outside. Some hundred weights of good English iron were projected into the town, and out of them are the gaspipes constructed which are now laid down in the Bassa Ville and the suburb of Capecure!

While thus giving peace to innumerable homes in England, he was ever, amidst war’s loudest thunder, endeavouring to found a home of peace for himself: that home was at Merton, in Surrey, where it was vouchsafed to him for a very brief season. The name of Merton is more closely connected with great men and great acts than many of our readers may be aware, and it was the fitting resting-place for a man who desired to gain breathing time between his heroic deeds. It was the birthplace of that Walter de Merton to whose liberality some of our readers may possibly be indebted for the instruction they may have received at Oxford—not that Merton College has been very famous for turning out good, at least great, scholars. According to a witty master of that College, it ought to have possessed more learning than any other in the University; for, said he, ‘many scholars brought much knowledge there and left it all behind them.’ Their founder, however, possessed both legal learning and religious wisdom. The law boasts of him as one of the great Chancellors, and the Church approvingly points to him as an exemplary Bishop of Rochester. For much of his learning, and something of his wisdom, he is indebted to the accomplished Augustine canons who cultivated both in the old convent founded by Gilbert Norman in 1115, and the prior of which sat in Parliament as a mitred abbot. It was at Merton that the early French invasion under Louis the Dauphin, made with the intent of driving Henry III. from his inheritance, was compensated for in 1217, by the treaty of peace forced upon the French prince. It was at Merton that the able De Burgh found refuge from his insatiable enemies; above all, it was here that were enacted the famous statutes of Merton. The Parliament of Henry III., which enacted those statutes, will be further ever-memorable for the unshakable firmness with which the barons—those reformers before the Reformation—withstood the insidious overtures of the ambitious prelates for the introduction of the imperial and canon laws. It was at Merton that was uttered a cry as famous, as significant, and as important in its result as the battle signal of Trafalgar. It was there that the barons shouted that famous shout—‘Nolumus leges Angliæ mutari!’

Of all these things which have conferred undying celebrity on the banks of the little river Wandle, Nelson probably knew nothing, and, if possible, cared less. But, notwithstanding this, we repeat that the locality which had been illustrated by humanity, by patriotism, by liberality, and by love of freedom, was a becoming spot whereon to spread the carpet of repose for him whose humanity was as great as his courage—whose patriotism was without a stain—whose liberality was ever extended without selfishness, and whose love of freedom made him the invincible foe of the nation that was endeavouring to enslave the world.

Had he been less liberal and more considerate for himself than for others he might have preserved Merton for his daughter—he would not have been compelled to sell his diamonds—and Merton itself need not have passed to those inheritors of other men’s patrimony—the money-lending Israelites.

For the fearful fight at Copenhagen, in which never were greater perils of navigation overcome, nor had there ever been in sea-fight more of English blood profusely shed—for this fight and victory Nelson received a token of honour from the Sultan; but his own Government granted no medals to the victors. They were permitted to wear the orders sent them by foreign princes, but no such honours awaited them at the hands of those who interpreted, and, perhaps, influenced, the will of King George. The people gave what the Ministry denied; and when the father of Nelson calmly closed his eyes on this world, in the year 1802, almost the last sounds that fell upon his ear were sounds of praise for his noble son. Nelson’s brother, the Rev. Dr. William Nelson, thought Lord Walpole cared little for his connection with the Nelson family, or he would have conferred Burnham Thorpe on the son of the late incumbent—that is to say, on himself. This reverend gentleman certainly does little credit to his profession, even taking him by his own description. When there was a report of his becoming successor to the yet living, but indisposed, Dean of Exeter, he wrote to his brother—‘I wish it may be so. If you see Mr. Addington soon, you may offer my vote for the University of Cambridge for members of Parliament, and for the county of Norfolk to any candidate he may wish.’ ‘The dean’ (adds Dr. Pettigrew) ‘died on July 15, and Nelson applied to Mr. Addington, but Dr. Nelson was not appointed. Exeter failing, in a short time he directed his views to Durham,’ and he hinted his wishes in a letter to Lady Hamilton. After reminding her that he is a Doctor of Divinity of the University of Cambridge, and that such a dignified personage is as much superior to a mere Scottish M.D. ‘as an arch-angel is to an arch-fiend,’ this man, who had little in him of the angelic and still less of the arch-angelic, offers the lady a bribe of Norfolk beafins; and, having thus impressed her with his dignity, and purchased as he thought her good will for ‘half-a-dozen apple-trees,’ thus concludes his very undignified epistle:—‘I see by the papers that there is a stall vacant at Durham—I suppose worth a thousand a year—in the gift of the Bishop (Barrington). I remember some years ago, when the Duke of Portland was Prime Minister, he secured one for Dr. Poyntz, at Durham. There is another vacant at York (if not filled up), in the gift of the archbishop; but I don’t know the value—no very great sum, I believe.’ So very illogical a person was as unsuccessful as he deserved to be. Lord Nelson’s chaplain on board the Vanguard at the Nile fared better, and merited so to fare. On Nelson’s application, Lord Eldon thought himself bound in public duty to pass over his own personal wishes and also the strong claims which individuals had upon him to be attentive to their welfare. Nelson’s chaplain at the Nile had a prior claim: and the Rev. Mr. Comyn received his appointment accordingly to the living asked for—that of Bridgham. While treating of the clerical connections of Nelson, we cannot omit noticing another trait in the brother who so little resembled him. He thus writes to Lady Hamilton:—‘The election for the University took place yesterday (July 5, 1802): the whole was over in five minutes: Mr. Pitt and Lord Euston are re-elected. I had a bow this morning from Billy in the Senate-house—so I made up to him and said a word or two to him.’

Soon after this, Lord Nelson was made a D.C.L. by the University of Oxford. The hero was with the Hamiltons and a party of relatives on a tour to Wales: they took Blenheim in their way. The duke was at home—he declined receiving them; but he sent them out something to eat! The descendant of Marlborough had not been introduced to the man as great as he from whom alone the duke possessed the only greatness he enjoyed, and, therefore, he would not shake hands with him! His grace, with the spirit of a Frenchman, kept himself as secure from the defender of his country as he well could; he rolled himself up like a hedgehog and kept his prickles erect. Had it not been for Nelson, he might not then have had Blenheim wherein to nurture his absurd shyness or absurder pride. Blenheim was the only hearth in England at which Nelson was churlishly received, and its master the only man in the kingdom who did not feel on speaking terms with the hero of the Nile. Nelson paid no fee, touched no food, and turned from the dwelling of him who owned none of his great ancestor’s characteristics, save his meanness, with calm contempt.

In 1802 hostilities were again renewed, and, as a matter of course, all eyes were turned to the defender of his country. His eyesight was failing: he had actual fears of becoming blind, but all his fears were suppressed in his eagerness to be of use to his native land. It may be noticed that, in this year, Sir William Hamilton died; and the fact that Nelson’s continued correspondence with the graceful widow is, from this time, no longer addressed to her as ‘dear friend,’ but ‘dearest Emma,’ plainly, perhaps too plainly, denotes the nature of the connection by which they were now bound. To judge of him by what he effected and what he endured during this year, we might assert that he never took rest nor thought of anything save the welfare of his country and the fighting condition of his fleet; but he had leisure devoted to further the welfare of private friends and other deserving individuals, and he could turn from devising plans for crushing the French to the arrangement of a paddock. All that he immediately cared for was lest his sight should entirely leave him before he could fall upon the French, who had a design upon Naples and Egypt. After he had beaten them, he felt almost certain that his eyes would be in total eclipse: he was resigned to the prospective fate, and contemplated it with a grave but manly resignation.

In a note on a paragraph in a letter written at this time by Lord Nelson, in which he says to Lady Hamilton that she will be sorry but not surprised to hear of Lord Bristol’s death, Dr. Pettigrew informs us that—

—— this nobleman was fourth Earl of Bristol and was also Bishop of Derry. He died on July 8, 1803. To avoid any superstitious exhibition on the part of sailors, who entertain a dread of having a corpse on board, his lordship’s body was packed up in a case and shipped as an antique statue. Could he have anticipated such a circumstance, it would have offered him a capital subject to have written upon.

In 1804, his harassing life in the Mediterranean received something to make it tolerable by his triumph in his case for prize-money against Lord St. Vincent. It was money fairly won after St. Vincent gave up the command; and his award was 13,000l. The sum rescued him from debt and from anxiety; but the enjoyment of it could not relieve him of his most anxious desire to destroy the French fleet, which wanted no inducement to leave Toulon, only that Nelson was waiting outside to receive them. His vigilance had to be doubled, but he had enough for the emergency, and to spare. Suspicions existed that Spain was about to enter into an armed coalition with France against England, and, without increase to his force, Nelson was ready to meet and confident of annihilating both. With all their advantage of superior strength, the French not only lingered in Toulon, but spread forged intelligence all over Europe that, on their making preparations for sea, Nelson had precipitately fled; but the avenger was still there; and, as now and then a French vessel would occasionally show her bowsprit outside of the harbour and retire in all speed at the sight of the flaunting Jack defying them from seaward, Nelson would say that, if the whole fleet did not soon come out and stand a contest, he should go in and try the effect of putting salt upon their tails!

But his own countrymen, or rather the Government which did not represent the feelings of his countrymen, wounded him more deeply than his worst enemies. Nelson was poor, considering the rank he had to maintain and the heavy charges, some voluntarily assumed and all honourably acquitted, on his income. The Ministry knew he was poor; but, because he was not ashamed of his poverty, they kept him plunged in it. In the Mediterranean, with war declared against Spain, there was a prospect of rich prizes being made and some substantial reward being given to him and his gallant band for their labours, their devotedness, and their blood. But between these deserving men and their right, evil influences interposed: unknown to Nelson, another admiral and a small squadron were stationed off Cadiz: their office was to capture all the commercial vessels they could: they performed the office to its uttermost letter—hurried to England with the golden argosies, and divided the proceeds so easily and bloodlessly won. When the fact became known to Nelson it severely shook his manly heart: he continued as steadfast as ever in the fulfilment of his duty, endured reiterated disappointment at not meeting with the French, and sealing his course of victory by a final triumph ere he found refuge in his home from the ingratitude of man, and at length returned to England, on leave, determined to enjoy his sweet reward at Merton, since he was denied any by an ungrateful Ministry.

He arrived at Merton on August 20, 1805. On the 13th of the following month, Captain Blackwood called on Nelson at five in the morning with news that the French and Spanish fleets were in the harbour of Cadiz: Nelson got up, dressed, and was ready to start to ‘give Monsieur Villeneuve a drubbing.’ The two proceeded to the Admiralty, the lords of which were now all eager to grant whatever Nelson asked. The latter knew he must rest satisfied with fifteen or sixteen sail of the line less than his enemies would have in array against him; but with these odds, backed by God’s blessing, he only knew of a full victory as the glorious result. He made some arrangements for those who depended on his bounty—some preparations in case of the sorrowful event that did cloud the general triumph—and, between ten and eleven at night, took his last farewell of Merton and of her who had so long kept him in sweet bonds—gazed once on his sleeping child, breathed a prayer over her, and went forth to death—to death the most glorious that was ever accorded to mortal man whereby to make his passage from time into eternity.

On October 21, he went into battle after fervent prayer to God. How, under fearful odds, he beat his enemy, is known to every schoolboy. Since that day Spain has almost ceased to be a naval power, and France is only now recovering the position from which the hero of that day flung her down. It was a day, the issues of which were left humbly to God, but which were struggled for as though they depended on the arm of mortal man alone. The triumphant result was purchased at a costly rate—the life of England’s dearest son; his mission was fulfilled: he had destroyed the last coalition made to enslave the world, and he died at the fitting moment of certain victory, leaving all dear to him on earth as a legacy to his native country. May his name live for ever!

Almost the last words uttered by Nelson were the expression of a hope that his country would provide for Lady Hamilton and for his adopted daughter. Nelson’s wife was alive, and the marriage had been without issue. Who, then, was this stranger that so closely occupied the last thoughts of the hero—and who the ‘adopted daughter’?—for such was the designation that engaged so engrossing a share of his love.

As for Lady Nelson, she was indeed alive, but she had long been dead to him. The pair, from the first, had been ill-matched; and what began ill begot no happy consequences. Nelson himself had warmth enough of temperament for two: his wife had none. She was, if we may judge by what is written, unmoved at his great triumphs, without pride in his great fame, and she was the last to welcome him when he came home crowned with great deeds: she was the last woman in the world fitted to be the wife of a hero, and perfectly incapable of controlling a hero’s weaknesses. When Nelson on one occasion was speaking warmly in his wife’s presence of the talents and beauty of Lady Hamilton, and of the immense services she had rendered his king and country through him, the hot Creole blood fired up: she rose in a whirlwind of passion, exclaiming that she was sick at hearing the name and praises of Lady Hamilton, and that Nelson must either desist from eulogising her or cease to live with his wife. Nelson defended his favourite with good humour; but from that hour utter estrangement ensued between himself and Lady Nelson, resulting in a separation which, once determined on, was never followed by opportunity or inclination for a reconciliation.

The remarkable individual—as remarkable for her great sufferings and great sorrows as for her great errors—who was in a certain degree the cause of breaking up the indifferent home which Nelson found in the companionship of his wife, may be said to have been the last of a race proverbial for bewitching and irresistible beauty—viz., the Lancashire witches. She was born at Preston, in 1764; her father’s name was Lyon, and her parents were of menial condition. The child, named Emma, was, on the early death of her father, taken by her mother to Hawarden, in Flintshire, where her remaining parent sought to support both by industry, and where Emma grew every day in beauty and ignorance. When old enough she was sent forth to earn her own livelihood. She commenced life in the humble condition of a nursery-maid in a family at Hawarden: subsequently she was engaged in the same capacity in the family of Dr. Budd, Chatham-place, Blackfriars. The good doctor little suspected that he possessed two servants in his house destined to achieve celebrity for themselves, and thus lend something of perpetuity to his own name. The nursemaid was Emma Lyons: the housemaid was Jane Powell, who, in her after career as an actress, was a fine interpreter of Shakespeare, could give interest to the bombast of Nat Lee, and make endurable the platitudes of Rowe—just as Rachel, in our own day, interpreted Racine and endowed with life the metrical dulness of Merope and Chimène. From Dr. Budd’s to the family of a dealer in St. James’s Market was a change from the east to the court end of the town, and it had its consequences. She attracted the attention and won the good-will of a lady of fashion, who withdrew her from servitude and elevated her to what is often more degrading and worse paid, the dignity of a companion. The education she received here was such as might be expected at the hands of a fine lady of the last century. She read all the stilted and not too delicate romances of the day—a course of reading which not only kills time, but which generally destroys the student. It at least did not improve the spelling of the now ‘young lady’; for to the last, though she talked like Aspasia, she spelled as badly as Caroline of Brunswick—a light fault in a day when countesses spelt Physician with an F, and thought G was the first letter of Augustus! The house of Emma’s patroness was the resort of all the great players, poets, and literati of the day. It was the ‘Gore House’ of its time: perhaps, its glories ended as ignobly. As a home and an asylum for a young girl full of beauty, and given to impulses which she knew not how to govern, it deserved not the name. The poor thing was made the Cynthia of the minute: the Trissotins dedicated sonnets to her; her beauty was deified; incense was daily offered to her by fools and knaves, and even by those who were neither: but yesterday she was toiling for wages, and perhaps complacently receiving the coarse compliments of liveried worshippers: to-day she was tended on by delicate hands, her smiles eagerly sought after, her presence acknowledged by a buzz of admiration, her wit celebrated by the ecstatic praises of the witty, and her intellect directed to everything save to the study of divine things. She loved the refinement which concealed the vice yet unknown to her: what was so pleasant could hardly be sinful, for it brought no remorse. The foolish virgin lacked a man at hand to tell her that she was neglecting her lamp; and it was only in after life, when intellect was superseded by cleverness and reflection made her matured beauty all the more radiant, that she sorrowingly acknowledged that to her first patroness had been sacrificed the morning of her youth, and that every opportunity neglected had been fruitful in a multitude of after sorrows.