arriage." By attentions such as these Chatham was
wont to stimulate the patriotism of our warriors; and on this occasion
his son played an equally inspiriting part. Imagination strives to
picture the scene, especially when England's greatest statesman and
greatest seaman passed through the ante-room where stood the future
victor of Waterloo.[734]

Never again were those three heroes to meet. Nelson departed for
Trafalgar. Pitt resumed the work which was wearing him to death, nerved,
however, by the consciousness that the despatch of Nelson to the
Mediterranean would foil Napoleon's project of making that sea a French
lake, "the principal aim of my policy" as he declared it to be. In that
quarter, then, Pitt won a decisive victory which was destined to save
not only that sea, but the Continent from the domination of France.
Whether a glimpse of the future course of events opened out to the
wearied gaze of the statesman we know not. All we know is that in
mid-December, when the "Victory" lay jury-masted and wind-bound for
three days off Walmer Castle, the Lord Warden was at Bath, in hope of
gaining health and strength for a struggle which concerned him even more
nearly than that in the Mediterranean, namely, the liberation of North
Germany and the Dutch Netherlands from the Napoleonic yoke.

FOOTNOTES:

[680] Pitt MSS., 102. Pitt to Whitworth, 28th May 1804; G. Rose,
"Diaries," ii, 136. See, too, Rose, "Despatches relating to the ...
Third Coalition," 27.

[681] Stanhope, iv, 199-201.

[682] Czartoryski, "Memoirs," ii, 35.

[683] "Creevey Papers," i, 28.

[684] Pretyman MSS.

[685] Rose, "Despatches relating to the ... Third Coalition" (Royal
Hist. Soc., 1904), 14-19; also Rose, "Napoleonic Studies," 364-6, for
the tentative Russian overture of November 1803.

[686] Rose and Broadley, "Dumouriez and the Defence of England against
Napoleon," 260.

[687] Fortescue, v, 204-13. Half of the fine went to the overseers of
the parish, who were bound under penalties to provide a parochial
substitute.

[688] Fortescue, v, 239, 240.

[689] "Creevey Papers," i, 29.

[690] Pitt MSS., 157.

[691] Pretyman MSS. See "Ann. Reg." (1805) for the failure at Boulogne
on 3rd October 1804.

[692] See Desbriere, "Projets ... de Debarquement, etc.," vol. v; J.
Corbett, "The Campaign of Trafalgar," chs. ii, iii, ix.

[693] "Kentish Gazette," 26th October 1804. Apparently Moore agreed to
the scheme, despite his opinion quoted