It is a long time since I have heard from England.... I have here a very laborious and a very anxious time. You will have heard from my wife, perhaps the narrow escape I have had from being cut off by the combined fleet. At that time I had only three ships with me and a frigate--they had 36 sail, and had they managed their affairs with the least ingenuity, I should have found it a very difficult thing to have fought my way through them, but we made good use of their want of skill and after seeing them safe into Port, we continued on our Station to blockade the town and prevent all commerce. I hope the Admiralty will give me credit for maintaining my station in the neighbourhood of so powerfull a fleet, for I never quitted them for a day, though I had but four ships; but now that I am reinforced by the squadron under Sir R. Calder, I have a fine fleet of 26 ships of line and some small frigates; and hope every good--and with God's blessing with me will do a good day's work for my country, whenever they give me an opportunity. That done, I shall be glad to retire to my home & enjoy the comforts of my family, for my strength fails, and the mind being on the full stretch, sinks and needs relief. I have a gentleman from Newcastle for my Captain, but he is a man of no talent as a sea-officer and of little assistance to me. How glad I shall be to get to my garden again at Morpeth and quitting the foe, see for the rest of my life only friends about me. Ever through the thunder of cannon or the stress of a watch which ceased neither day nor night, through the threatenings of death or the allurements of fame, one thought was paramount in Collingwood's mind. A yearning for a peaceful garden he had left behind--to him a veritable garden of Paradise--for the innocent prattle of his children, the sweet companionship of his wife. A dream of reunion tormented and sustained him. "Whenever I think how I am to be happy again my thoughts carry me back to Morpeth," he wrote. Incapable of a dramatic appeal to sympathy, his letters to Stanhope, in their strong self-repression, breathe a longing the more profound. For that Paradise of his dreams Collingwood would have joyfully bartered fame, emolument, all that the world could offer, had not duty claimed from him a prolonged sacrifice of all which he held dear. Whether, if he could have looked on through the few remaining years of his life and have foreseen the end of that longing and those dreams, his weary spirit could still have borne the burden laid upon it, none may say. But buoyed up by that ever-present hope he faced the strain of his eternal watching with an unflinching courage, which may have been occasionally strengthened by a recollection which visited him, and the remarkable circumstances of which cannot be ignored.