rfectly understood. _Never fear the event_."

This plan for the defence of London against an attack by surprise,
drawn up by Nelson on the spur of the moment, was based simply upon
his general ideas, and without specific information yet as to either
the character or extent of the enemy's preparations, or of the means
of resistance available on his own side. It has, therefore, something
of an abstract character, embodying broad views unmodified by special
circumstances, and possessing, consequently, a somewhat peculiar
value in indicating the tendency of Nelson's military conceptions. He
assumes, implicitly, a certain freedom of movement on the part of the
two opponents, unrestricted by the friction and uncertainty which in
practice fetter action; and the use which, under these conditions, he
imagines either will make of his powers, may not unfairly be assumed
to show what he thought the correct course in such a general case.

Prominent among his ideas, and continuous in all his speculations as
to the movements of an enemy, from 1795 onward, is the certainty that,
for the sake of diversion, Bonaparte will divide his force into two
great equal fragments, which may land at points so far apart, and
separated by such serious obstacles, as were Solebay and Dover. Those
who will be at the trouble to recall his guesses as to the future
movements of the French in the Riviera, Piedmont, and Tuscany, in 1795
and 1796, as well as his own propositions to the Austrians at the same
period, will recognize here the recurrence, unchastened by experience
or thought, of a theory of warfare it is almost impossible to approve.
That Bonaparte,--supposed to be master of his first movements,--if he
meant to land in person at Dover, would put half his army ashore at
Solebay, is as incredible as that he would have landed one half at
Leghorn, meaning to act with the other from the Riviera. If this
criticism be sound, it would show that Nelson, genius as he was,
suffered from the lack of that study which reinforces its own
conclusions by the experience of others; and that his experience,
resting upon service in a navy so superior in quality to its enemies,
that great inferiority in number or position could be accepted, had
not supplied the necessary corrective to an ill-conceived readiness to
sub-divide.

The resultant error is clearly traceable, in the author's opinion, in
his dispositions at Copenhagen, and in a general tendency to allow
himse