With his doings at Naples and Palermo, and his much-debated and inexplicable attachment to Lady Hamilton which unhappily began during this period, we have here no concern. The hero of the Nile, like every other great man, had his faults. Those who cavil at them are really blaming their possessors for not being perfect, for if really great men had no faults they would be perfect, and that is impossible, and, so much being said, the scene may now shift forthwith from the Mediterranean to the Baltic. The Armed Neutrality is now only a phrase in history, but in the year 1801 it was a very serious reality. It was a league between Russia, Sweden, and Denmark. From the English point of view it meant this--that France, with whom we had now practically embarked in a struggle to the death, would be able, under the sanction of this league, to import from the shores of the Baltic the very articles that we did not wish her to have, and which she couldn’t get elsewhere. These were naval stores, pine-trees for masts and spars, hemp for rigging, tar, and so on. It was very easy to see that this Armed Neutrality meant in plain English that these three Powers were quite agreeable to the smashing-up of Great Britain by France provided that they were not called upon to pay any of the expenses or suffer any of the other losses of the war. Denmark was therefore politely but firmly requested to detach herself from this league, the reason being that Denmark in those days kept the key of the Baltic. Denmark refused, and unhappily for her she did so just at the time when the Victor of the Nile had come home for a well-earned holiday. We are not accustomed now, in the pride of our unequalled naval strength, to take very much account of the fleets of these three countries, but just before the Battle of the Baltic was fought it was a very different matter. The Danes had twenty-three line-of-battle ships and thirty-one frigates, not counting bomb-vessels and guard-ships. Sweden had eighteen ships of the line, fourteen frigates and sloops and seventy-four galleys, as well as a small swarm of gun-boats, while Russia could put to sea eighty-two line-of-battle ships and forty-two frigates. Such a force within the narrow waters of the Baltic was a very formidable one, but before we can arrive at a just appreciation of the magnificence and importance of the service which Nelson did for his country we must remember that of all European waters those of the Baltic, and especially of the approaches to it, are the most difficult and dangerous. Even with the aid of steam it would be no light matter to take a fleet into the Baltic under the guns of Elsinore and Kronberg were the lamps of the lighthouses extinguished and all the buoys removed.