of lecturing, one of the main reliances of our incipient undertaking. I had begun my reading with Lapeyrouse-Bonfils, in October, 1885. The preceding summer at Panama had so far affected my health as to cause a month's severe illness in the winter; and when recovered I unguardedly let myself in for another month's work, on naval tactics, which might have been postponed. Hence the end of the following May had arrived before I began to write; but I was so full of matter, absorbed or evolved, that I ran along with steady pace, and by September had on paper, in lecture form, all of my first _Sea Power_ book, except the summary of conclusions which constitutes the final chapter. Before publication, in 1890, the whole had been very carefully revised; but the changes made were mostly in the details of battles, or else verbal in character, to develop discussions in amplitude or clearness. Battles had been to me at first a secondary consideration; hence for revision I had accumulated many fresh data, notably from two somewhat scarce books: _Naval Battles in the West Indies_, by Lieutenant Matthews, and _Naval Researches_, by Captain Thomas White, British officers contemporary and participant in the events which they narrate of the War of American Independence. A lecturer is little hampered by the exactions of style; indeed, the less he ties himself to his manuscript, the more he can talk to his audience rather than read, and the more freely his command of his subject permits him to digress pertinently, the better he holds attention. When I found after my first course that the treatment was to my hearers interesting as well as novel, the thought of publishing entered my mind; and while I had no expectation or ambition to become a stylist, the question of style gradually forced itself on my consideration. I intend to state some of my conclusions, because the casual remarks of others, authors or critics, have been helpful to me. Why should not style as well as war have its history and biography, to which each man may contribute an unpretentious mite? Notably, I got much comfort from Darwin's complaint of frequent recurrences of inability to give adequate expression to thoughts, which he could then put down only in such crude, imperfect form as the moment suggested, leaving the task of elaboration to a more propitious season. If so great a man was thus troubled, no strange thing was happening to me in a like experience. Such good cheer in intellectual as well as moral effort is one of the best services of biography and history, raising to the rank of ministering spirits the men whose struggles and success they tell. Was not Washington greater at Valley Forge than at Yorktown? and Nelson beating against a head wind than at Trafalgar? Johnson has anticipated Darwin's method in advice given in his Gargantuan manner: "Do not exact from yourself, at one effort of excogitation, propriety of thought and elegance of expression. Invent first, and then embellish.