Collingwood's existence, indeed, alternated between an eternal racking anxiety and a monotony before which the imagination sinks appalled. "Between days and nights I am almost wore out," he wrote briefly to Stanhope on April 29th, 1806, "but I do not mean to quit my station while I have health"; and on September 26th of that same year, after writing an account of the situation in which he finds himself, he exclaims abruptly, "It is the dullest life that can be conceived and nothing but the utmost patience can endure it!" During long months of blockading, dawn after dawn arose to reveal to his weary gaze the same boundless expanse of rocking ocean, which he had well-nigh learnt to hate; the same restricted space of deck to traverse; the same routine of action to contemplate; the same type of food further to nauseate a reluctant appetite; the same complete lack of mental and physical relaxation, which is, in itself, almost an essential to sanity. Thus, soon, to the tension of that perpetual guardianship was added the haunting dread that an existence which was undermining his health might also impair his mental faculties, and this at a time when he was aware that one false step, one error in strategy, and ignominy might be his portion or the liberties of England herself be the sacrifice. In a diary [9] in which, during the last years of his life, he entered memoranda, ostensibly from which to compile his dispatches, there is conveyed more eloquently than by any laboured insistence the ceaseless fret of his guardianship and the impracticability which he experienced of sifting the truth or falsehood of the information on which his line of conduct was dependent. Incessantly do its pages recall, with elaborate care, the details of reported engagements and of reported manoeuvres of the enemy, supplied from some apparently unimpeachable source, and incessantly are such memoranda revoked emphatically by a later entry. Once, after retailing minutely the details of an assault undertaken by the Portuguese and Spaniards against the French--which he was informed had continued for six days and during which about 8000 of the former and 6000 of the latter had been killed--and subsequent to which all the inhabitants of Elvas had been put to the sword by the French--he appends with pardonable irritation--"_Not a word of this true--the whole a fabrication for the amusement of country gentlemen and ladies._" Meanwhile he was confronted by the knowledge that those who were most ready to criticise his decisions, had least comprehension of the difficulties with which he had to contend. On May 15th, 1807, Mrs Stanhope writes:--