We here quote with pleasure from the Frenchman:--"Jervis, in the face of those symptoms, which threatened the British navy with disaffection, sternly devoted himself to the establishment of _implicit obedience_. The efficient organisation of the fleet was the labour of his life, and occupied his latest thoughts. Never rash himself, he nevertheless opened the way for the most daring deeds. Nelson rushed into the arena, and, with the rapidity of lightning, showed the latent results of the change. The governing principle witnessed, rather than decreed the change. Its source, in fact, was _not_ in the Admiralty, but in those floating camps, wherein the triumphs which astonish us are gradually elaborated. Official power is but the inert _crucible_ which transmutes the subsidies of Parliament into ships. But a quickening principle is wanting to those immense fleets, and the admirals supply it. Jervis and Nelson rapidly transmitted the creative spark, and bequeathed a certain sort of sovereignty under the distrustful eye of the English Admiralty--a kind of dynasty arose--'the mayors of the palace took the sceptre from the do-nothing kings.'" All this is comparatively just. But the Frenchman peeps out under the panegyrist, after all. Can it be conceived that any other human being, at the end of nearly half a century, would quote, with the slightest degree of approval, the report of Decrès, the French minister of the marine to Napoleon, in 1805, after all Nelson's victories, and just preceding the most illustrious of them all--Trafalgar? "The boasting of Nelson," writes Decrès, "equals his silliness, (_ineptie_)--I use the proper word. But he has one eminent quality--namely, that of aiming among his captains _only_ at a character for bravery and good fortune. This makes him _accessible to counsel_, and consequently, in difficult circumstances, if he commands nominally, _others direct really_." We have no doubt that, after scribbling this supreme _ineptie_, Decrès considered himself to have settled the whole question, and to have convicted Nelson of being simply a bold blockhead--Nelson, the man of the hundred fights--the prince of tacticians--the admiral who had never been beaten, and from whom, at the battle of Aboukir, Decrès himself was rejoiced to make his escape, after having seen the ruin of the French fleet.