gagement, a shot carried away both legs of the youngest;
the elder soon afterwards fell; and, finally, their unfortunate father.
Not even these distressing circumstances were capable of exciting any
great degree of generous commiseration for those worthy and gallant
victims, so entirely was each heart occupied by agonizing reflections on
the loss of him who had, in himself, ever been considered as alone a
host. It was a victory the most compleatly brilliant, but never had a
victory been gained which conveyed so little gladness to the hearts of
the conquerors. Every bosom felt oppressed with sorrow, on a day of such
triumph to their country; and not an eye closed, in the whole fleet, on
the sad night by which it was succeeded, without pouring an affectionate
tribute of manly tears to the memory of the godlike hero by whose merits
it had been so certainly obtained, and by whose death it had been so
dearly purchased. "He will never again lead us to conquest!" sobbed many
a bursting heart. "Our commander, our master, our father, our friend,
our companion, is no more, and when shall we behold his equal? Never,
never, never!" Such was their love of the adored hero, that every
virtuous individual in the fleet would gladly have lost his own life to
have saved him. It is, indeed, stated as a positive fact, that a seaman
of the Victory, who was, a little before the fatal catastrophe,
suffering the amputation of an arm, actually said to the surgeon--"Well,
this might, by some men, be considered as a sad misfortune; but I shall
be proud of the accident, as it will make me the more resemble our brave
commander in chief." Before the operation was finished, the sad tidings
arrived below, that Lord Nelson was wounded. The seaman, who had never
once shrunk, amidst all the pain he endured, now suddenly started from
his seat; and vehemently exclaimed--"Good God! I would rather the shot
had taken off my head, and spared his precious life!"

Vice-Admiral Collingwood, in his letter to the Admiralty, describing
this great victory, says--"I have not only to lament, in common with the
British navy, and the British nation, in the fall of the commander in
chief, the loss of a hero, whose name will be immortal, and his memory
ever dear to his country; but my heart is rent with the most poignant
grief for the death of a friend, to whom, by many years intimacy, and a
perfect knowledge of the virtues of his mind, which inspired ideas
superior to the c