himself alone; they were the tribute paid to his unyielding energy and
genius, shown not only in actual fight but in the steadfastness which
held to his station through every discouragement, and rose equal to
every demand made by recurring want and misfortune.

Alike in the general conduct of his operations and on the battlefield
under the fire of the enemy, this lofty resolve was the distinguishing
merit of Suffren; and when there is coupled with it the clear and
absolute conviction which he held of the necessity to seek and crush
the enemy's fleet, we have probably the leading traits of his military
character. The latter was the light that led him, the former the
spirit that sustained him. As a tactician, in the sense of a driller
of ships, imparting to them uniformity of action and manoeuvring, he
seems to have been deficient, and would probably himself have
admitted, with some contempt, the justice of the criticism made upon
him in these respects. Whether or no he ever actually characterized
tactics--meaning thereby elementary or evolutionary tactics--as the
veil of timidity, there was that in his actions which makes the _mot_
probable. Such a contempt, however, is unsafe even in the case of
genius. The faculty of moving together with uniformity and precision
is too necessary to the development of the full power of a body of
ships to be lightly esteemed; it is essential to that concentration of
effort at which Suffren rightly aimed, but which he was not always
careful to secure by previous dispositions. Paradoxical though it
sounds, it is true that only fleets which are able to perform regular
movements can afford at times to cast them aside; only captains whom
the habit of the drill-ground has familiarized with the shifting
phases it presents, can be expected to seize readily the opportunities
for independent action presented by the field of battle. Howe and
Jervis must make ready the way for the successes of Nelson. Suffren
expected too much of his captains. He had the right to expect more
than he got, but not that ready perception of the situation and that
firmness of nerve which, except to a few favorites of Nature, are the
result only of practice and experience.

Still, he was a very great man. When every deduction has been made,
there must still remain his heroic constancy, his fearlessness of
responsibility as of danger, the rapidity of his action, and the
genius whose unerring intuition led him to break t