n cause."

A week later he wrote again, having heard that the Austrian
commander-in-chief, General Wallis, had declared that the defeat was
due to the failure of the British to co-operate. Nelson thought that
they had a strong hold on Wallis, and he therefore enclosed a letter
to him, which he asked might be forwarded by the minister. The
experience and training of the latter, however, here interposed to
prevent his sensitive uneasiness leading to a false step, and one that
might involve him farther than he foresaw. While bearing the clearest
and strongest witness to the facts which Nelson had asked him to
establish, he hinted to him, tactfully and with deference, that, it
was scarcely becoming a public servant to justify his conduct to a
foreign official, he being accountable only to his own government.
Nelson accepted the suggestion, and in so doing characterized aptly
enough the temperament which then and at other times carried him
farther than discretion warranted. "My feelings ever alive, perhaps,
to too nice a sense of honour, are a little cooled."

Along with this care for the stainless record of the past, there went
on in his mind a continual reasoning upon the probable course of the
next year's operations. In his forecasts it is singular to notice how,
starting from the accurate premise that it is necessary for the French
to get into the plains of Italy,--"the gold mine,"--he is continually
misled by his old prepossession in favor of landing in rear of the
enemy a body of troops, supported neither by sure communication with
their main army, nor by a position in itself of great strength. The
mistake, if mistake it was, illustrates aptly the errors into which a
man of great genius for war, of quick insight, such as Nelson
indisputably had, can fall, from want of antecedent study, of
familiarity with those leading principles, deduced from the experience
of the past, which are perhaps even more serviceable in warning
against error than in prompting to right. Everything assures him that
the French will carry some twenty thousand men to Italy by sea. "If
they mean to carry on the war, they must penetrate into Italy. I am
convinced in my own mind, that I know their very landing-place." This,
it appears afterwards, he believed would be between Spezia and
Leghorn, in the districts of Massa and Carrara, whence also they would
doubtless turn upon Leghorn, though neutral, as a valuable and
fortified seaport. "The prevent