Sentiments so ably expressed are delightful reading. Nelson, if less dignified in his language, never failed to show his warm appreciation of those who worked under him. Caring little for literary form, he invariably blurted out the naked truth. His despatches were marked by the same forcible characteristics exhibited in his conduct when engaging the enemy. “The spirit and zeal of the Navy,” he tells a correspondent who had congratulated him on the victory, “I never saw higher than in this Fleet, and if England is true to herself, she may bid defiance to Europe. The French have always, in ridicule, called us a Nation of shopkeepers--_so_, I hope, we shall always remain, and, like other shopkeepers, if our goods are better than those of any other Country, and we can afford to sell them cheaper, we must depend on our shop being well resorted to.” An armistice for a term of fourteen weeks was agreed upon on the 9th April 1801. This period would allow Nelson to settle with the Russian fleet and return to Copenhagen, as he himself bluntly admitted during the negotiations. Unused to such “straight talk” in diplomatic overtures, one of the Danish Commissioners began to speak of a renewal of hostilities. It merely added fuel to Nelson’s fire, and drew from him the comment, made to one of his friends who was standing near, “Renew hostilities! Tell him we are ready at a moment; ready to bombard this very night.” The remark was quite sufficient to silence the man who talked thus lightly of war. An opportunity to teach the Russians a lesson did not come in Nelson’s way. Scarcely more than a week passed from the time the signatures had dried on the parchment when to Parker was sent news of the murder of Paul I. With the death of the monarch Russian policy underwent a complete change so far as Great Britain was concerned. The castles in the air for the overthrow of the British rule in India, which the Czar and Napoleon had hoped to place on solid foundations, melted away as mist before the sun. Paul’s successor, Alexander I., knowing full well the enormous importance of the British market for Russian goods, lost no time in coming to terms with England. Shortly afterwards Sweden, Denmark, and Prussia followed his example. The much-boasted Maritime Confederacy was quietly relegated to the limbo of defeated schemes for the downfall of the great Sea Power. Meanwhile Sir Hyde Parker had been recalled from the Baltic, and had placed his command in the hands of Nelson on the 5th May. The latter proceeded from Kiöge Bay, his station since the birth of amicable arrangements with the Danes, to Revel, where he hoped to meet the Russian squadron he had been so anxious to annihilate before the battle of Copenhagen.