same happy moment with Captain Parker.” “More determined, persevering courage, I never witnessed.” “I long to pay them, for their tricks t’other day,” he writes to Lady Hamilton, “the debt of a drubbing, which, surely, I’ll pay: but _when, where, or how_, it is impossible, your own good sense must tell you, for me or mortal man to say.” Nelson was deeply attached to Captain Parker, whom he calls “my child, for I found him in distress.” His correspondence at this time is replete with references to the condition of the patient. “Would I could be useful,” he tells the doctor, “I would come on shore and nurse him.” When the gallant officer died at Deal on the 28th September, the Admiral begged that his friend’s hair might be cut off; “it shall remain and be buried with me.” Again we see the wistful, woman-like emotionalism of Nelson’s nature. He calls it “a happy release,” and says in the same sentence, “but I cannot bring myself to say I am glad he is gone; it would be a lie, for I am grieved almost to death.” When “the cleverest and quickest man and the most zealous in the world” was buried at Deal, Nelson attended the ceremony. It is recorded that the man who could stare Death in the face without flinching, who was “in perils oft” and enjoyed the experience, was visibly affected. The Admiral’s grief was expressed in a practical way. Finding that the deceased Captain had left his finances in a most unsatisfactory condition he paid the creditors in full. The war with France had lasted eight weary years. Great Britain had more than maintained her own on the sea; Napoleon had proved his consummate skill in the manipulation of land forces. Overtures for peace were mooted, then definitely made through M. Otto, a French agent in London for the exchange of prisoners. The cessation of hostilities became the topic of the hour. After innumerable delays the preliminaries were signed in London on the 1st October 1801, to the joy of the populace on both sides of the Channel. Nelson was not convinced as to Napoleon’s _bonâ fides_. He loathed the French and took no pains to disguise the fact. In writing to a friend a fortnight or so before he received news of the event mentioned above, he admits, “I pray God we may have Peace, when it can be had with honour; but I fear that the scoundrel Buonaparte wants to humble us, as he has done the rest of Europe--to degrade us in our own eyes, by making us give up all our conquests, as proof of our sincerity for making a Peace, and then he will condescend to treat with us.” The Admiral was not far wrong, as subsequent events proved. In a letter dated the 14th September, two days later than the one from which the above quotation is made, he looks forward “with hope but will not be too sanguine. I yet hope the negotiation is not broken entirely off, for we can never alter the situation of France or the Continent, and ours will become a War of defence; but I hope they will do for the best.” Three days after the