But among all these illustrious names there is none which so thoroughly awakens our enthusiasm, or so readily calls forth our applause, as that of Farragut. With all of Nelson's courage and daring, he had more than his executive ability and fertility of resource, a wider and more generous intellectual culture, and a more unblemished, _naive_, frank, and gentle character. He bore in his veins some traces of the best blood of Spain, his father, George Farragut, having been a native of Citadella, the capital of the island of Minorca, and a descendant of an ancient and honorable Catalonian family. The father came to this country in 1776, and united most heartily in our struggle for independence, attaining during the war the rank of major. After the conclusion of the war, Major Farragut married Miss Elizabeth Shine, of North Carolina, a descendant of the old Scotch family of McIven, and settled as a farmer at Campbell's Station, near Knoxville, Tenn. Here, on July 5, 1801, his illustrious son was born. The father seems to have been not altogether contented with a farmer's life in that mountainous region, for not long after we hear of him as a sailing-master in the navy, and an intimate friend of the father of Commodore David D. Porter, who then held a similar rank. Young Farragut inherited his father's love for the sea, and though brought up so far inland, among the Cumberland Mountains, he had hardly reached the age of nine and a half years, when the longing for a sailor's life possessed him so strongly, that his father consented; and after some little delay, a midshipman's warrant was procured for him.