sence--in
short, to keep the place warm for his return.

Nelson knew that the Admiralty was besieged with admirals, many senior
to himself, seeking for employment, and that it would be very
difficult for it to resist the pressure for the vacancy in "my
favourite command," to resume which he was impelled by both his sense
of duty and his love of glory. He wrote therefore to Elliot, and to
the King of the Two Sicilies, in the same sense as he had to Melville,
recalling his well-tried devotion to the interests of that Court,
which a successor might not equally show, and suggesting that his
cause would be strengthened by an application for his return on the
part of the King. The latter consequently intimated to the British
Government that he hoped Lord Nelson would be sent back. He was, in
truth, so much agitated over the prospect of his going, that he
offered him a house in either Palermo or Naples, if he wished to
remain in the South to recruit; an offer which Elliot, equally uneasy,
urged him to accept.

The Government did exactly what was asked. Nelson received permission
to go to England, when he felt it necessary, leaving the command in
the hands of Bickerton; but at the same time the Admiralty had to meet
the rush of claimants for the vacancy, all the more pressing because
rumors were afloat of a Spanish war, which would make the
Mediterranean not only the most important, but, in prize-money, the
most lucrative command. Among the applicants was Sir John Orde, who
had been nursing a technical grievance ever since he had been passed
over, in Nelson's favor, for the command of the detachment with which
the Battle of the Nile was fought. Nelson's leave was issued on the
6th of October, and on the 26th Orde was given a small squadron--five
ships-of-the-line--to blockade Cadiz. Being senior to Nelson, and of
course to Bickerton, he could only have this position by reducing the
latter's station, which had extended to Cape Finisterre. The line
between the two commands was drawn at the Straits' mouth, a rather
vague phrase, but Gibraltar was left with Nelson. Orde thus got the
station for prize-money, and Nelson that for honor, which from youth
until now he most valued. "The arrangement," wrote his friend, Lord
Radstock, "will be a death-stroke to his hopes of the galleons; but as
your chief has ever showed himself to be as great a despiser of riches
as he is a lover of glory, I am fully convinced in my own mind that he
wo