oy--that triumph was afforded him. He lived to know
that the victory was decisive; and the last guns which were fired at the
flying enemy were heard a minute or two before he expired.

The total British loss in the battle of Trafalgar amounted to 1,587.
Twenty of the enemy struck,--unhappily the fleet did not anchor, as
Nelson, almost with his dying breath, had enjoined,--a gale came on from
the southwest; some of the prizes went down, some went on shore; one
effected its escape into Cadiz; others were destroyed; four only were
saved, and those by the greatest exertions. The wounded Spaniards were
sent ashore, an assurance being given that they should not serve till
regularly exchanged; and the Spaniards, with a generous feeling, which
would not, perhaps, have been found in any other people, offered the use
of their hospitals for our wounded, pledging the honour of Spain that
they should be carefully attended there. When the storm after the action
drove some of the prizes upon the coast, they declared that the English,
who were thus thrown into their hands, should not be considered as
prisoners of war; and the Spanish soldiers gave up their own beds to
their shipwrecked enemies.

It is almost superfluous to add that all the honors which a grateful
country could bestow were heaped upon the memory of Nelson. A public
funeral was decreed, and a public monument. Statues and monuments also
were voted by most of our principal cities. The leaden coffin, in which
he was brought home, was cut in pieces, which were distributed as relics
of Saint Nelson,--so the gunner of the _Victory_ called them,--and when,
at his interment, his flag was about to be lowered into the grave, the
sailors who had assisted at the ceremony, with one accord rent it in
pieces, that each might preserve a fragment while he lived.

The death of Nelson was felt in England as something more than a public
calamity: men started at the intelligence, and turned pale, as if they
had heard of the loss of a dear friend. An object of our admiration and
affection, of our pride and of our hopes, was suddenly taken from us;
and it seemed as if we had never, till then, known how deeply we loved
and reverenced him. What the country had lost in its great naval
hero--the greatest of our own, and of all former times--was scarcely
taken into the account of grief. So perfectly, indeed, had he performed
his part, that the maritime war, after the Battle of Trafalgar, was
cons