e him up in
battle, sickness, and exposure, had mingled soft dreams of flight from
the world, of days spent upon the sunny slopes of Sicily, on his
estate of Bronte, amid scenes closely resembling those associated with
his past delights, and with the life of the woman whom he loved. To
this he several times alludes in the almost daily letters which he
wrote her. But, whether to be realized there or in England, he panted
for the charms of home which he had never known. "I am fixed," he
tells her, "to live a country life, and to have many (I hope) years of
comfort, which God knows, I never yet had--only moments of
happiness,"--a pathetic admission of the price he had paid for the
glory which could not satisfy him, yet which, by the law of his being,
he could not cease to crave. "I wish for happiness to be my reward,
and not titles or money;" and happiness means being with her whom he
repeatedly calls Santa Emma, and his "guardian angel,"--a fond
imagining, the sincerity of which checks the ready smile, but elicits
no tenderness for a delusion too gross for sympathy.

Whatever sacrifices he might be ready to make for his country's
service, he was not willing to give up all he held dear when the real
occasion for his exceptional powers had passed away; and the
assurances that the service absolutely required his presence in the
Baltic made no impression upon him. He knew better. "Had the command
been given me in February," he said, "many lives would have been
saved, and we should have been in a very different situation; but the
wiseheads at home know everything." Now it means expense and
suffering, and nothing to do beyond the powers of an average officer.
"Any other man can as well look about him as Nelson." "Sir Thomas
Troubridge," he complains, after enumerating his grievances, "had the
nonsense to say, now I was a Commander-in-Chief I must be pleased.
Does he take me for a greater fool than I am?" It was indeed shaving
pretty close to insult to send out a man like Nelson as second, when
great work was in hand, and then, after he had done all his superior
had permitted, and there was nothing left to do, to tell him that he
was indispensable; but to be congratulated upon the fact by a Lord of
the Admiralty, which Troubridge then was, was rather too much. He
could not refuse to accept the command, but he demanded his relief in
terms which could not be disregarded. His health, he said, made him
unequal to the service. For t