difficulties of any emergency. In the display of this, in its many
self-revelations,--in concentration of purpose, untiring energy,
fearlessness of responsibility, judgment sound and instant, boundless
audacity, promptness, intrepidity, and endurance beyond all
proof,--the restricted field of Corsica and the Riviera, the
subordinate position at Cape St. Vincent, the failure of Teneriffe,
had in their measure been as fruitful as the Nile was soon to be, and
fell naught behind the bloody harvests of Copenhagen and Trafalgar.
Men have been disposed, therefore, to reckon this moral energy--call
it courage, dash, resolution, what you will--as Nelson's one and only
great quality. It was the greatest, as it is in all successful men of
action; but to ignore that this mighty motive force was guided by
singularly clear and accurate perceptions, upon which also it
consciously rested with a firmness of faith that constituted much of
its power, is to rob him of a great part of his due renown.

But it was not only in the greatness of the opportunities offered to
Nelson that external conditions now changed. The glory of the hero
brought a temptation which wrecked the happiness of the man. The loss
of serenity, the dark evidences of inward conflict, of yielding
against conviction, of consequent dissatisfaction with self and
gradual deterioration, make between his past and future a break as
clear, and far sharper than, the startling increase of radiancy that
attends the Battle of the Nile, and thenceforth shines with
undiminished intensity to the end. The lustre of his well-deserved and
world-wide renown, the consistency and ever-rising merit of his
professional conduct, contrast painfully with the shadows of
reprobation, the swerving, and the declension, which begin to attend a
life heretofore conformed, in the general, to healthy normal standards
of right and wrong, but now allowed to violate, not merely ideal
Christian rectitude, but the simple, natural dictates of upright
dealing between man and man. It had been the proud boast of early
years: "There is no action in my whole life but what is honourable."
The attainment of glory exceeding even his own great aspirations
coincides with dereliction from the plain rules of honor between
friends, and with public humiliation to his wife, which he allowed
himself to inflict, notwithstanding that he admitted her claims to his
deferential consideration to be unbroken. In this contrast, of the