ry of fighting battles merely to win
them,--is one of the most marked and decisive features of Nelson's
genius as a general officer. It recurs over and over again, and at all
periods, in his correspondence, this clear and full appreciation of
the relation of the parts to the whole.[113] It underlay his sustained
purpose during the long pursuit of the preceding months, that, if he
found the allied squadron, "they would not part without a battle."
Whatever else the result, that particular division would do no harm
that year, and with it necessarily fell the great combination,
whatever that might be, of which it was an essential factor. "The
event would have been in the hands of Providence," he wrote to Barham;
"but we may without, I hope, vanity, believe that the enemy would have
been fit for no active service after such a battle." There is wanting
to the completeness of this admirable impulse only the steadying
resolve that he would bide his time, so as, to use Napoleon's phrase,
to have the most of the chances on his side when he attacked. This
also we know he meant to do. "I will _wait_, till they give me an
opportunity too tempting to be resisted, or till they draw near the
shores of Europe." In such qualification is to be seen the equipoise
of the highest order of ability. This union of desperate energy with
calculating wariness was in him not so much a matter of reasoning,
though reason fully endorses it, as it was the gift of
nature,--genius, in short. Reasoning of a very high order illuminates
Nelson's mental processes and justifies his conclusions, but it is not
in the power of reason, when face to face with emergency, to bridge
the chasm that separates perception, however clear, from the inward
conviction which alone sustains the loftiest action. "Responsibility,"
said St. Vincent, "is the test of a man's courage." Emergency, it may
be said, is the test of his faith in his beliefs.

While those at the head of the State thus hung upon his counsels, and
drew encouragement from his indomitable confidence, the people in the
streets looked up to him with that wistful and reverent dependence
which does not wholly understand, but centres all its trust upon a
tried name. They knew what he had done in the now distant past, and
they had heard lately that he had been to the West Indies, and had
returned, having saved the chief jewel among the colonies of the
empire. They knew, also, that their rulers were fearful about
in