it almost overpowers my feelings." "I
am using force upon myself to keep away," he had already said to
Acton; "for I think it likely, was I to fly to Naples, which I am much
inclined to do, that the French might turn it to some plea against
those good sovereigns." In his anxiety to join the fleet, and get in
touch of the French, the length of the passage, three weeks, caused
him great vexation, and deepened his convictions of the uselessness of
the island to his squadron off Toulon. "My opinion of Malta, as a
naval station for watching the French in Toulon, is well known; and my
present experience of what will be a three weeks' passage, most fully
confirms me in it. The fleet can never go there, if I can find any
other corner to put them in; but having said this, I now declare, that
I consider Malta as a most important outwork to India, that it will
ever give us great influence in the Levant, and indeed all the
southern parts of Italy. In this view, I hope we shall never give it
up." "Malta and Toulon are entirely different services. It takes upon
an average seven weeks to get an answer to a letter. When I am forced
to send a ship there, I never see her under two months."

With Gibraltar, however, Malta gave the British two impregnable and
secure bases of operations, within reasonable distance of one another,
and each in close proximity to points most essential to control.
During Nelson's entire command, the three chief centres of interest
and of danger were the Straits of Gibraltar, the heel of Italy, and
Toulon. The narrowing of the trade routes near the two former rendered
them points of particular exposure for merchant shipping. Around them,
therefore, and in dependence upon them, gathered the largest bodies of
the cruisers which kept down privateering, and convoyed the merchant
ships, whose protection was not the least exacting of the many cares
that fell upon Nelson. Upon the Malta division depended also the watch
over the mouth of the Adriatic and the Straits of Messina, by which
Nelson hoped to prevent the passage of the French, in small bodies, to
either Sicily, the Morea, or the Ionian Islands. Malta in truth, even
in Nelson's time, was the base for operations only less important
than the destruction of the Toulon fleet. The latter he rightly
considered his principal mission, success in which would solve most
other maritime difficulties. "My first object must ever be to keep the
French fleet in check; and, if