nd, with the addition of three or four
frigates, and send him away, to endeavour to ascertain the real
object of the preparations making by the French." These preparations
for a maritime expedition were being made at Toulon and the
neighboring ports, on a scale which justly aroused the anxiety of the
British Cabinet, as no certain information about their object had been
obtained.

Nelson's departure from England on this occasion closes the first of
the two periods into which his career naturally divides. From his
youth until now, wherever situated, the development has been
consecutive and homogeneous, external influences and internal
characteristics have worked harmoniously together, nature and ambition
have responded gladly to opportunity, and the course upon which they
have combined to urge him has conformed to his inherited and acquired
standards of right and wrong. Doubt, uncertainty, inward friction,
double motives, have been unknown to him; he has moved freely in
accordance with the laws of his being, and, despite the anxieties of
his profession and the frailty of his health, there is no mistaking
the tone of happiness and contentment which sounds without a jarring
note throughout his correspondence. A change was now at hand. As the
sails of the "Vanguard" dip below the horizon of England, a brief
interlude begins, and when the curtain rises again, the scene is
shifted,--surroundings have changed. We see again the same man, but
standing at the opening of a new career, whose greatness exceeds by
far even the high anticipations that had been formed for him. Before
leaving England he is a man of distinction only; prominent, possibly,
among the many distinguished men of his own profession, but the steady
upward course has as yet been gradual, the shining of the light, if it
has latterly shot forth flashes suggestive of hidden fires, is still
characterized by sustained growth in intensity rather than by rapid
increase. No present sign so far foretells the sudden ascent to fame,
the burst of meridian splendor with which the sun of his renown was
soon to rise upon men's eyes, and in which it ran its course to the
cloudless finish of his day.

Not that there is in that course--in its achievements--any
disproportion with the previous promise. The magnitude of the
development we are about to witness is due, not to a change in him,
but to the increased greatness of the opportunities. A man of like
record in the past, but