work, and
hope for His blessing on our endeavours to liberate a people who have
been our sincere friends." Hearing at the same time that an army
officer of general rank will have the command instead of himself, he
adds: "Pray assure him there is nothing I feel greater pleasure in
than hearing he is to command. Assure him of my most sincere wishes
for his speedy success, and that he shall have every support and
assistance from me." Truly, in generosity as in ardor, Nelson was, to
use the fine old phrase, "all for the service."

The project upon Leghorn had the approval of the Viceroy and of
Jervis; but the latter, while expressing perfect reliance upon "the
promptitude of Commodore Nelson," was clear that the attempt must
depend upon the contimied advance of the Austrians. This was also
Nelson's own view. "All will be well, I am satisfied, provided Wurmser
is victorious; upon this ground only have I adopted the measure." This
qualification redeems the plan from the reproach of rashness, which
otherwise might have been applied to the somewhat desperate
undertaking of carrying a fortified town by such a feat of hardihood.
It loses thus the color of recklessness, and falls into place as one
part of a great common action, to harass the retreat of a beaten
enemy, and to insure the security of one's own positions.

On the 15th of August, when the above words were written, Nelson was
still ignorant of the Austrian defeats at Lonato and Castiglione,
nearly two weeks before, and of their subsequent retreat to the Tyrol.
A rumor of the reverse had reached him through Florence, but he gave
it little attention, as the French in Leghorn were not claiming a
victory. On the 19th he knew it definitely, and had to abandon the
expectation, confided to his brother, that the next letter seen from
him would be in the "Public Gazette." "An expedition is thought of,
and of course I shall be there, for most of these services fall to my
lot." "One day or other," he had written to his wife, apparently with
this very enterprise in mind, "I will have a long Gazette to myself; I
feel that such an opportunity will be given me. I cannot," he
continued with prophetic self-reliance, "if I am in the field of
glory, be kept out of sight."

During the remainder of the month he continued to be amused with those
unfounded reports of victories, which are among the invariable
concomitants of all wars, and which his sanguine temperament and
peculiar readin