the result was, a state of public anxiety of which no
former war had given the example.

It is incontestable that the list of the British navy at this period
of the war exhibited some of the noblest specimens of English
character--brave, intelligent, and indefatigable men, ready for any
service, and equal for all; with all the intrepidity of heroes,
possessing the highest science of their profession, and exhibiting at
once that lion-heartedness, and that knowledge, which gave the British
navy the command of the ocean. And yet, if we were to assign the
highest place where all were high, we should probably assign it to
Lord St Vincent as an admiral. Nelson certainly, as an executive
officer, defies all competition; his three battles, Copenhagen,
Aboukir, and Trafalgar, each of them a title to eminent distinction,
place him as a conqueror at the head of all. But an admiral has other
duties than those of the line of battle; and for a great naval
administrator, first disciplining a fleet, then supplying it with all
the means of victory, and finally leading it to victory--Lord St
Vincent was perhaps the most complete example on record of all the
combined qualities that make the British admiral. His profound
tactics, his stern but salutary exactness of command, his incomparable
judgment, and his cool and unhesitating intrepidity, form one of the
very noblest models of high command. All those qualities were now to
be called into full exertion.

The continental campaign had left Europe at the mercy of France.
England was now the only enemy, and she was to be assailed, in the
first instance, by a naval war. To prevent the junction of the Spanish
and French fleets, the Tagus was the station fixed upon by Lord St
Vincent. Ill luck seemed to frown upon the fleet. The Bombay Castle, a
seventy-four, was lost going in; the St George, a ninety, grounded in
coming out, and was obliged to be docked; still the admiral determined
to keep the sea, though his fleet was reduced to eight sail of the
line. The day before he left the Tagus, information was received that
the enemy's fleets had both left the Mediterranean. The French had
gone to Brest, the Spanish first to Toulon, then to Carthagena, and
was now proceeding to join the French at Brest. A reinforcement of six
sail of the line now fortunately joined the fleet off the Tagus; but
at the same time information was received that the Spanish fleet of
twenty-seven sail of the line, with fo