Then look at the Battle of the Nile! It was an incomparable battle--but it only made Nelson into a Common or Garden Lord; when the Battle of Cape St. Vincent, which was practically won by Nelson, made Sir John Jervis into an Earl. History is so written that no end of literary gentlemen will endeavour to confute all I am saying by extracts (or, as they will call them, facts) from Contemporary Documents and Newspapers. Well now, to-day, read the _Morning Post_ and _Daily News_ on the same incident! (For myself I prefer the _Daily News_.) Again, Nelson died poor. That appeals. What Prize Money might he not have accumulated, had he chased dollars as he chased the enemy! Then with his dying breath, mortally wounded in the hour of the greatest of sea victories, he asks his country to provide for his friend as he could do nothing for her himself; and, whatever may have been her faults, she had nursed and tended him, not only when sorely wounded after the Nile, but afterwards when his frail body was almost continuously racked with pain. She died in penury and found a pauper’s grave in a foreign land. A passing Englishman paid her funeral expenses. It makes one rise up and say “Damn!” That vivid immortal spirit, whose life was his country’s, who never flogged a man; whose heart was tender and “worn on his sleeve for daws to peck at,” has to suffer even now for miscreants who published his letters to this friend of his that only her eye was meant to see. Also, Prudes nowadays forget how very different was the standard of morals at that time. Does not history tell us that Dukes were the honoured results of illicit relationships? And we don’t think any the worse of Abraham because he was the husband of more than one wife. But let that pass. I heard yesterday that a distinguished Bishop said he loved my sentiments but not my words. But fancy! Nelson left on half-pay in War! It’s unbelievable, but yet it so happened. It was envy; and he was no sycophant, so he couldn’t be a courtier. It was so with him as with our great Exemplar: “The Common People heard him gladly.” And what a “Send-off” it was on Southsea beach at Portsmouth when he embarked for Trafalgar! What a scene it was, with these Common People surging round him--none else were there, and neither the King nor the Admiralty sent a dummy, as is customary, to represent them. But isn’t it always the way? General Booth and Doctor Barnardo weren’t buried in Westminster Abbey; but they had a more glorious funeral--millions of the “Common People” followed them to their graves, unmarshalled and unsolicited. Give me the Common People, and a fig for your State ceremonial! [Illustration: 1904. AGED 63. ADMIRAL. Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth.]