elf did the
business; and that he ought to have them, as the price and reward of
his two years' long watching, and his hard chase. "Nelson," said she,
"however we may lament your absence, offer your services; they will
be accepted, and you will gain a quiet heart by it: you will have a
glorious victory, and then you may return here, and be happy." He looked
at her with tears in his eyes: "Brave Emma! Good Emma! If there were
more Emmas there would be more Nelsons."

His services were as willingly accepted as they were offered; and Lord
Barham, giving him the list of the navy, desired him to choose his own
officers. "Choose yourself, my lord," was his reply: "the same spirit
actuates the whole profession: you cannot choose wrong." Lord Barham
then desired him to say what ships, and how many, he would wish, in
addition to the fleet which he was going to command, and said they
should follow him as soon as each was ready. No appointment was ever
more in unison with the feelings and judgment of the whole nation. They,
like Lady Hamilton, thought that the destruction of the combined fleets
ought properly to be Nelson's work; that he who had been

"Half around the sea-girt ball,
The hunter of the recreant Gaul,"

ought to reap the spoils of the chase which he had watched so long, and
so perseveringly pursued.

Unremitting exertions were made to equip the ships which he had chosen,
and especially to refit the VICTORY, which was once more to bear his
flag. Before he left London he called at his upholsterer's, where the
coffin which Captain Hallowell had given him was deposited; and desired
that its history might be engraven upon the lid, saying that it was
highly probable he might want it on his return. He seemed, indeed,
to have been impressed with an expectation that he should fall in
the battle. In a letter to his brother, written immediately after his
return, he had said: "We must not talk of Sir Robert Calder's battle--I
might not have done so much with my small force. If I had fallen in with
them, you might probably have been a lord before I wished; for I know
they meant to make a dead set at the VICTORY." Nelson had once
regarded the prospect of death with gloomy satisfaction: it was when
he anticipated the upbraidings of his wife, and the displeasure of his
venerable father. The state of his feelings now was expressed in his
private journal in these words: "Friday night (Sept. 13), at half-past
ten, I drov