. I could join most heartily in his desire; but we
cannot do impossibilities, and I am as little used to find out the
impossibles as most folks; and I think I can discriminate between the
impracticable and the fair prospect of success." By the 27th of August
he had returned to the Downs, where, with a brief and unimportant
intermission, he remained until the cessation of hostilities with
France in October.

Satisfied that invasion was, for that year at least, an empty menace,
Nelson fell again into the tone of angry and fretful complaint which
was so conspicuous in the last weeks of his stay in the Baltic. To
borrow the words of a French admirer, "He filled the Admiralty with
his caprices and Europe with his fame." Almost from his first contact
with this duty, it had been distasteful to him. "There is nothing to
be done on the great scale," he said. "I own, my dear Lord," he told
St. Vincent, "that this boat warfare is not exactly congenial to my
feelings, and I find I get laughed at for my puny mode of attack." As
usual, he threw himself with all his might into what he had to do, but
the inward friction remained. "Whilst I serve, I will do it actively,
and to the very best of my abilities. I have all night had a fever,
which is very little abated this morning; my mind carries me beyond my
strength, and will do me up; but such is my nature. I require nursing
like a child."

That he was far from well is as unquestionable as that his distemper
proceeded largely from his mind, if it did not originate there. "Our
separation is terrible," he writes to Lady Hamilton; "my heart is
ready to flow out of my eyes. I am not unwell, but I am very low. I
can only account for it by my absence from all I hold dear in this
world." From the first he had told St. Vincent that he could not stay
longer than September 14th, that it was beyond his strength to stand
the equinoctial weather. The veteran seaman showed towards him the
same delicate consideration that he always had, using the flattering
urgency which Nelson himself knew so well how to employ, in eliciting
the hearty co-operation of others. "The public mind is so much
tranquillised by your being at your post, it is extremely desirable
that you should continue there: in this opinion all His Majesty's
servants, with Sir Thomas Troubridge, agree. Let me entreat your
Lordship to persevere in the measures you are so advantageously
employed in, and give up, at least for the present, yo