ommon race of men, I was bound by the strongest ties of
affection: a grief, to which even the glorious occasion on which he
fell, does not bring the consolation which, perhaps, it ought!"

When the dispatches, containing an account of the glorious victory off
Cape Trafalgar, with the death of our chief hero, arrived in England,
and were perused by his majesty, the king was greatly affected. Tears
flowed from the royal eyes; and his majesty pathetically exclaimed--"We
have lost more than we have gained!" They were read, at Windsor, by the
queen, to the assembled princesses, and the whole royal group most
affectionately wept the fall of the hero. His Royal Highness the Prince
of Wales, with a dignified excess of grief, most acutely felt the loss
of the heroic supporter of his father's house; and a private letter of
condolence, which his royal highness wrote to Alexander Davison, Esq. on
the death of their inestimable friend, is replete with sentiments which
augur highly for the probably future sovereign's adding new lustre to
the brilliant throne of his most renowned ancestors. The Duke of
Clarence, too, long united in friendship to the hero, whom he venerated
with an almost paternal regard, lamented him with little less than the
truest filial sorrow. In short, from the entire royal family, through
every subordinate degree of rank and virtue, to the humblest class of
existence, wherever the tidings came, tears overflowed every eye, and
grief took entire possession of every heart. The glorious victory,
though one of the greatest ever obtained by mortal, and though the last,
as well as the most splendid, of the hero so beloved; was scarcely
considered, by the nation, as an object worthy of those public
rejoicings with which very inferior triumphs are constantly attended.
Cannon, indeed, as usual, announced the intelligence, but their sound
conveyed a deep melancholy to the heart; the bells were rung, but their
peals inspired no hilarity, and seemed little less than the mournful
knells of death; nocturnal illuminations were displayed, but the
transparencies which they discovered, amidst the gloom, presented only
so many sad memorials of the universal loss, expressed by ingenious
devices to the hero's memory, which the spectators beheld with
sensations of augmented grief, and one general aspect of expressive but
unutterable woe. If such was the state of the public feeling, what must
have been that of the hero's dearest relativ