When we survey, with rapture, the state of an exalted hero, arrived at
all the honours which it is possible for a human being to receive from
the gratitude, the veneration, and the love, of his fellow-mortals;
seen, as he then is, like a luminary of the first magnitude in the full
blaze of meridian glory, we are generally too dazzled by the lustre we
behold, to penetrate, or even to reflect on, the circuitous, the
tedious, or the perplexed path, through which he may have been
constrained to pass, in pursuit of the splendid destiny at length
happily attained.

In this sublime situation, we have lately beheld a British naval hero,
who has scarcely ever been equalled, and certainly never surpassed. As a
nation, we have been charmed with his brilliant refulgence; we have been
cheared by his vivifying influence; and we lament the short duration of
his splendor with a grief so general, that it appears to be without
parallel in the history of any age or country.

To trace the progress of this heroic and inestimable character, through
the various vicissitudes of his eventful life, from it's commencement to
it's close, with all the accuracy and minuteness which circumstances
will admit; contemplating and comparing the several causes and effects
which may have retarded or accelerated the progress of his public
career, which may have blessed or embittered his private comforts; is
the arduous task of the present biographer: who holds, with a trembling;
hand, the pen that would presumptuously aspire to record, with suitable
dignity, the history of one of the very greatest and most successful
naval heroes that has ever yet astonished and adorned the world.

Lord Nelson, Duke of Bronte--for he always, very properly, signed with
both these titles, from the moment of obtaining them--was the offspring