opening scene in the great drama of the Revolution,--the first
Assembly of Notables. Warlike preparations consequently ceased, and on
the 30th of November, 1787, the cruise of the "Boreas" came to an end.

It was during this last month of servitude, and immediately before
quitting the ship, that Nelson is said to have used the vehement
expressions of discontent with "an ungrateful service," recorded by
his biographers, concluding with his resolve to go at once to London
and resign his commission. In the absence of the faintest trace, in
his letters, of dissatisfaction with the duty to which the ship was
assigned, it is reasonable to attribute this exasperation to his
soreness under the numerous reprimands he had received,--a feeling
which plainly transpires in some of his replies, despite the forms of
official respect that he scrupulously observed. Even in much later
days, when his distinguished reputation might have enabled him to
sustain with indifference this supercilious rudeness, he winced under
it with over-sensitiveness. "Do not, my dear lord," he wrote to Earl
Spencer a year after the battle of the Nile, "let the Admiralty write
harshly to me--my generous soul cannot bear it, being conscious it is
entirely unmerited." This freedom of censure, often felt by him to be
undeserved, or at least excessive, and its sharp contrast with the
scanty recognition of his unwearied efforts,--of whose value he
himself was by no means forgetful,--though not unusual in the
experience of officers, are quite sufficient to account for the sense
of neglect and unjust treatment by which he was then outraged. This
feeling was probably accentuated, also, by a renewal of the legal
persecution which had been begun in the West Indies; for towards the
end of the year he received formal notice of suits being instituted
against him for the seizure of the American vessels, and it is likely
enough that some intimation of what was coming reached him before