It was not merely in the acquisition of knowledge, commonly so called, that this practice contributed to prepare Farragut for his great mission as a naval commander-in-chief, but also in the discipline of character and in the development of natural capacities admirably suited for that position. It should not be overlooked that before the war, and now again in our own day, the idea of professional improvement in the United States Navy has fastened for its fitting subject upon the development of the material of war, to the comparative exclusion of the study of naval warfare. This naturally results from the national policy, which does not propose to put afloat a fleet in the proper sense of the word; and whose ideal is a number, more or less small, of cruisers neither fitted nor intended for combined action. Under these circumstances, the details of the internal economy of the single ship usurp in the professional mind an undue proportion of the attention which, in a rightly constituted navy, might far better be applied to the study of naval tactics, in the higher sense of that word, and of naval campaigns. Farragut could not but feel the influence of this tendency, so strongly marked in the service to which he belonged; the more so, as it is a thoroughly good tendency when not pushed to an exclusive extent. But here the habit of study, and stretching in every direction his interest in matters professional, stood him in good stead, and prepared him unconsciously for destinies that could not have been foreseen. The custom of reading had made him familiar with the biography and history of his profession, the school to which the great Napoleon recommended all who would fit themselves for high military command; and of which a recent distinguished authority has said that it may be questioned whether a formulated art of war can be said to exist, except as the embodiment of the practice of great captains illustrated in their campaigns.