rite me a letter, the substance of which
will be dictated by the British consul."

The vehemence with which the French are here denounced, though pitched
in a key deemed harmonious to the ears for which it was immediately
intended, was entirely consonant to the feelings which had lately
taken possession of Nelson. They were the result, probably, in part,
of the anxious rancor bred by the uncertainties and worry of the
pursuit of Bonaparte; in part, also, of more direct contact than
before with the unbridled license which the French Government and its
generals, impelled by dire necessity and by an unquestionable lack of
principle, had given to the system of making war support war. The
feebleness and corruption of the Directory had relaxed the reins of
discipline from top to bottom, and a practice which finds its
justification only when executed with the strictest method and
accountability, had degenerated into little better than disorganized
pillage. "'Down, down with the French!' is my constant prayer."
"'_Down, down_ with the French!' ought to be placed in the
council-room of every country in the world." "To serve my King, and to
destroy the French, I consider as the great order of all, from which
little ones spring; and if one of these little ones militate against
it, I go back to obey the great order and object, to _down, down_ with
the damned French villains. Excuse my warmth; but my blood boils at
the name of a Frenchman. I hate them all--Royalists and Republicans."
Infidels, robbers, and murderers are the characteristic terms. This
detestation of the legitimate enemy spread, intensified, to those who
supported them in Naples,--the Jacobins, as they were called. "Send me
word some proper heads are taken off," he wrote to Troubridge, "this
alone will comfort me." "Our friend Troubridge had a present made him
the other day, of the head of a Jacobin," he tells St. Vincent, "and
makes an apology to me, the weather being very hot, for not sending it
here!" Upon the copy of the letter accompanying this ghastly gift to
him, Troubridge had written, "A jolly fellow. T. Troubridge." The
exasperation to which political animosities had given rise may be
gauged by the brutal levity shown in this incident, by men of the
masculine and generous characters of Troubridge and Nelson, and should
not be forgotten in estimating the actions that in due consequence
followed.

The duties as well as the anxieties of his situation bore hea