on the 4th of July anchored at Spithead. Whether Mrs. Nelson
accompanied him in the ship does not appear certainly; but from
several expressions in his letters it seems most probable that she
did. Five days after his arrival he sent a message from her to
Locker, in terms which indicate that she was with him.

A newly married man, who had just concluded a full cruise of such
arduous and unremitting exertions, might reasonably have wished and
expected a period of relaxation; but the return of the "Boreas"
coincided with a very disturbed state of European politics. In the
neighboring republic of Holland two parties were striving for the
mastery; one of which was closely attached to France, the other, that
of the Stadtholder, to Great Britain. In 1785 the former had gained
the upper hand; and, by a treaty signed on Christmas Day of that year,
a decided preponderance in the councils of the United Provinces had
been given to France. The enfeebled condition of the latter country,
however, had allowed little prospect of permanence to this
arrangement; and, in the summer of 1787, an insult offered by the
French party to the wife of the Stadtholder led to a forcible
intervention by the King of Prussia, whose sister she was. Louis XVI.
prepared to support his partisans, and notified his purpose to Great
Britain; whereupon the latter, whose traditional policy for over a
century had been to resist the progress of French influence in the Low
Countries, replied that she could not remain a quiet spectator, and at
once began to arm. "The Dutch business," wrote Nelson, "is becoming
every day more serious; and I hardly think we can keep from a war,
without giving forever the weight of the Dutch to the French, and
allowing the Stadtholdership to be abolished,--things which I should
suppose hardly possible." Already his eager spirit was panting for the
fray. "If we are to have a bustle, I do not want to come on shore; I