Thus, before I began to write, my leading ideas for the historical treatment of the influence of sea power during the period 1793-1814 rested upon an approval of the main features of Pitt's war policy, and sympathy with his personal position; upon a clear conviction of the weight of the Continental System as a factor in the general situation, and of its being a direct consequence from British maritime supremacy; and upon a sufficiently comprehensive acquaintance with the operations of the land warfare up to the Peace of Amiens. Having as yet written only the two introductory chapters, and Howe's campaign being strictly episodical, the work as an organic whole was still before me when the summer of 1890 arrived. It was then thought probable that the College would at once resume, and in order to be at hand I settled my family in Newport, there addressing myself to my new lectures. Considering the mass of detail through which my hearers must be carried, I thought advisable to begin with an outline statement of the general political and military conditions, and of their sequences; a rudimentary figure, a skeleton, the nakedness of which should render easy to understand the mutual bearings of the several parts, and their articulations. So most surely could the relation of sea power to the other members be seen, and its influence upon them and upon the ultimate issue be appreciated. Before I began, I remember explaining to a brother officer my conception of the Continental System as the culmination of the maritime struggle, which in a narrowly military sense had ended with Trafalgar. The light thus cast would illuminate afterwards each of the several sections of the history, treated circumstantially in order of time. In short, I here applied to the whole the method of my diagram for Trafalgar, and not of that for June 1st. The result was the chapter last in the work, as it now stands, but the first to be composed.