prepared to burn the ships when the French get a little nearer.
Mack is at Capua, with a strong force, numbers not mentioned.
Dreadful weather! The great queen very ill: I fear for her.

"N."

Two causes, in a short time, particularly contributed, as it should
seem, to tranquillize the mind of our hero, with regard to what he could
not but consider as Sir Sidney Smith's too great assumption of
authority: one of these was, the hope that his friend Captain Troubridge
might effect the destruction of the transports at Alexandria before Sir
Sidney's arrival; and the other, immediate information from the Earl of
St. Vincent, that he was as little satisfied as Lord Nelson himself,
with the business which had so deeply affected his feelings, and had
therefore exerted his own power to prevent any such future occurrence.
"Sir Sidney Smith," says his lordship, writing this month to Captain
Ball, "from a letter he wrote the Earl of St. Vincent off Malta, has
given great offence; having said, that he presumed, all the ships in the
Levant being junior to him, he had a right to take them under his
command. His lordship has, in consequence, given him a broad hint, and
taken him handsomely down; and, to prevent any thing of the kind
happening in future, he has ordered Sir Sidney to put himself
_immediately_ under my command." These great men, however, though they
felt jealous of their own command, had minds superior to the retention
of any continued animosity; and, when they fully understood each other,
became very sincere friends. They were all equally anxious for the good
of the country; for the honour of the profession; and, for their own
individual reputation. Their differences consisted more in the manner
than in the form and substance of the thing; and, perhaps, on the whole,
Lord Nelson's excess of feeling may be regarded as having, for a time,