Perhaps in this cursory view of Nelson one may be permitted to seize on what appears to me the central incident of his life, which so peculiarly illustrates his extraordinary genius for War. His audacity! His imagination! His considered rashness! I think myself the Battle of the Nile is that incident--for this reason: that it has been recorded in writing what actually occurred to Lord Nelson and to the French Admiral at the very same instant of time--each having at his side the very same officer in each Fleet. It was sunset. Nelson was walking the deck with the Navigating Officer of the Fleet--the “Master of the Fleet” was his technical title. The look-out man at the mast-head reports seeing on the horizon the mast-heads of a mass of ships at anchor--it was the French Fleet in Aboukir Bay. Nelson instantly stops in his walk and orders the signal to the Fleet to make all possible sail and steer for the enemy. He is remonstrated with, both by his own officers on board and by his favourite Captain of the Fleet at going in to fight the French Fleet without any charts. If he waited till the sun rose, they would be able to see from aloft the shoal water and so steer with safety alongside the enemy. Nelson answers his favourite Captain that if that Captain’s ship does get on shore, as he fears, then she’ll be a buoy to show him where anyhow one shoal is. Troubridge _did_ get on shore, and he _was_ a buoy. Nelson went in. The French Admiral blew up at midnight in his flagship the “Orient” and Casabianca, his Captain, and his son are the theme of a great poem: “The boy stood on the burning deck.” The French Admiral was walking up and down the deck with _his_ Master of the Fleet, when _his_ look-out man at the mast-head reported on the horizon the topmast sails of a number of ships. The French Admiral stopped in his walk as abruptly as Nelson and at the very same instant that Nelson stopped in his walk; but he said “It’s the English Fleet, but they won’t come in to-night. They have no charts!” So he did not recall his men from the shore--and in the result his fleet was destroyed, and the one or two ships that did escape under Admiral Dumanoir were captured. And Napoleon wrote, “But for Nelson at the Nile I would have been Conqueror of the World”--or words to that effect. And yet Nelson was only made a common or garden Lord for this great battle, and spent two years on the Continent kicking his heels about to pass the time before returning to England. Imagine! he wasn’t wanted! I think Lord Rosebery was right--Nelson being slighted has led to his greater appreciation.