w
intolerable, my dear friend being absent. It is barren indeed. English
Harbour I hate the sight of, and Windsor I detest. I went once up the
hill to look at the spot where I spent more happy days than in any one
spot in the world. E'en the trees drooped their heads, and the
tamarind tree died:--all was melancholy: the road is covered with
thistles; let them grow. I shall never pull one of them up." His
regard for this attractive woman seems to have lasted through his
life; for she survived him, and to her Collingwood addressed a letter
after Trafalgar, giving some particulars of Nelson's death. Her only
son also died under the latter's immediate command, ten years later,
when serving in Corsica.

The chief interest of the dispute over Moutray's position lies not in
the somewhat obscure point involved, but in the illustration it
affords of Nelson's singular independence and tenacity in a matter of
principle. Under a conviction of right he throughout life feared no
responsibility and shrank from no consequences. It is difficult for
the non-military mind to realize how great is the moral effort of
disobeying a superior, whose order on the one hand covers all
responsibility, and on the other entails the most serious personal and
professional injury, if violated without due cause; the burden of
proving which rests upon the junior. For the latter it is, justly and
necessarily, not enough that his own intentions or convictions were
honest: he has to show, not that he meant to do right, but that he
actually did right, in disobeying in the particular instance. Under no
less rigorous exactions can due military subordination be maintained.
The whole bent of advantage and life-long training, therefore, draws
in one direction, and is withstood by nothing, unless either strong
personal character supplies a motive, or established professional
standing permits a man to presume upon it, and to exercise a certain
right to independence of action. At this time Nelson was practically
unknown, and in refusing compliance with an order he took a risk that
no other captain on the station would have assumed, as was shown by
their failure a few months later to support their convictions in an
analogous controversy, upon which Nelson had entered even before the
Moutray business. In both cases he staked all upon legal points,
considered by him vital to the welfare of the navy and the country.
The spirit was identically the same that led him to sw