n
excellent memory, he thus accumulated a great deal of information
besides that gained from observation and intercourse with the world.
Hobart Pasha, a British officer in the Turkish Navy and an accomplished
seaman, wrote: "Admiral Farragut, with whom I had many conversations,
was one of the most intelligent naval officers of my acquaintance." He
loved an argument, and, though always good-tempered in it, was tenacious
of his own convictions when he thought the facts bore out his way of
interpreting their significance. When told by a phrenologist that he had
an unusual amount of self-esteem, he replied: "It is true, I have; I
have full confidence in myself and in my judgment"--a trait of supreme
importance to a man called to high command. But against the defects of
this quality he was guarded by the openness of mind which results from
the effort to improve and to keep abreast of the times in which one
lives.

Farragut was naturally conservative, as seamen generally tend to be; but
while averse to sudden changes, and prone to look with some distrust
upon new and untried weapons of war, he did not refuse them, nor did
they find in him that prejudice which forbids a fair trial and rejects
reasonable proof. Of ironclads and rifled guns, both which in his day
were still in their infancy, he at times spoke disparagingly; but his
objection appears to have arisen not from a doubt of their efficacy--the
one for protection, the other for length of range--but from an opinion
as to their effect upon the spirit of the service. In this there is an
element of truth as well as of prejudice; for the natural tendency of
the extreme effort for protection undoubtedly is to obscure the
fundamental truth, which he constantly preached, that the best
protection is to injure the enemy. Nor was his instinct more at fault in
recognizing that the rage for material advance, though a good thing,
carries with it the countervailing disposition to rely upon perfected
material rather than upon accomplished warriors to decide the issue of
battle. To express a fear such as Farragut's, that a particular
development of the material of war would injure the tone of the service,
sounds to some as the mere echo of Lever's commissary, who reasoned that
the abolition of pig-tails would sap the military spirit of the
nation--only that, and nothing more. It was, on the contrary, the
accurate intuition of a born master of war, who feels, even without
reasoning, tha