The delicate and difficult task of selecting from a long and confidential memoir, written with all the fulness of a father’s heart, and intended to be perused as a sort of sacred record by his children; oftentimes too minute or too particular for publication; and still exhibiting in general so much of the character that it was desired to pourtray, that it was difficult to know how to resist insertion; this task was, I say, undertaken by another, who has discharged it with as much fidelity as discretion; and who left nothing to me, but to peruse and confirm that, which had been thus arranged and prepared for the press. But even these advantages; assisted and increased as they are by the affectionate recollections of the members of his own family; while they promised to render the labour of the undertaking easy, would have been insufficient to determine me to attempt a work for which I was so incompetent, if I had proposed to offer to the public a memoir of the professional life, and of the naval achievements of the man whom it was impossible to know without honouring or loving him. But this seemed unnecessary to be done, and certainly was not to be done by me. His public services, both as a seaman and an officer, have been long known and fully appreciated by the public, and thus have had their appropriate record in the naval histories of the last war. His professional character still lives in the recollection of the service. It therefore is not necessary that naval events should be narrated here, which have been better told in other places; nor that exploits should be dwelt upon, which though they never can be heard without emotion, it may be sufficient for all present purposes to refer to, rather than to repeat. I would, therefore, beg leave to state at once, that the only aim I venture to propose to myself, is one which differs essentially from that, which has been generally followed by the writers of similar memoirs.