ce that they could repeat, upon the French rear, the
same part the "Agamemnon" alone had played with the "Ca Ira,"--and
such a chance, were it no more, should not have been dawdled with.
"Missed the opportunity,"--the fatal words, "it might have been." Is
it far-fetched to see in his reflections upon "this miserable action,"
as it is styled independently by James and himself, the forecast of
the opening sentence of his celebrated order before
Trafalgar?--"Thinking it almost impossible to bring a fleet of forty
sail-of-the-line[30] into a line of battle in variable winds, thick
weather, and other circumstances which must occur, _without such a
loss of time that the opportunity would probably be lost of bringing
the enemy to battle in such a manner as to make the business
decisive_, I have therefore made up my mind--" Or, again, as he saw
Man dragged off--with too little remonstrance, it may be--by a
superior, who could by no means see what was the state of the action,
is there not traceable a source of the feeling, partly inborn, partly
reasoned, that found expression in the generous and yet most wise
words of the same immortal order?--"The second in command will [in
fact command his line and],[31] after my intentions are made known to
him, have the entire direction of his line to make the attack upon
the enemy, and to follow up the blow until they are captured or
destroyed." Whether such words be regarded as the labored result of
observation and reflection, or whether as the flashes of intuition,
with which genius penetrates at once to the root of a matter, without
the antecedent processes to which lesser minds are subjected,--in
either case they are instructive when linked with the events of his
career here under discussion, as corroborative indications of natural
temperament and insight, which banish altogether the thought of mere
fortuitous valor as the one explanation of Nelson's successes.

With this unsatisfactory affair, Nelson's direct connection with the
main body of the fleet came to an end for the remainder of Hotham's
command. It is scarcely necessary to add that the prime object of the
British fleet at all times, and not least in the Mediterranean in
1795,--the control of the sea,--continued as doubtful as it had been
at the beginning of the year. The dead weight of the admiral's having
upon his mind the Toulon fleet, undiminished in force despite two
occasions for decisive action, was to be clearly seen in