by which he must guide his course. Like the blind, who at first saw
men as trees walking, and then saw everything clearly, so his mental
illumination gradually reduces confusion to order, and from perplexity
evolves correct decision. But what shall be said of those flashes of
insight, as at Cape St. Vincent, elicited in a moment, as by the
stroke of iron on rock, where all the previous processes of ordered
thought and labored reasoning are condensed into one vivid
inspiration, and transmuted without a pause into instant heroic
action? Is that we call "genius" purely a mystery, of which our only
account is to give it a name? Or is it true, as Napoleon said, that
"on the field of battle the happiest inspiration is often but a
recollection"?

From Rose Nelson went to the Comptroller of the Navy, Sir Charles
Middleton, who afterwards, as Lord Barham, sent him forth to
Trafalgar. Middleton had replied promptly to the first report of the
fraudulent transactions, giving assurance of his readiness to act, and
urging that all the information possible should be secured, as he
feared that the allegations were substantially true. He now showed the
instructions of the Navy Board, under which its colonial employees
acted, to Nelson, who said that, if honestly followed, they must
prevent the unlawful practices; but that he believed they were
habitually violated, and that he himself, though senior officer on the
station, had never before seen the instructions. This failure to
intrust supervision to the one person upon whom all responsibility
should ultimately have rested, practically neutralized the otherwise
laudable methods prescribed by the Board. It was simply another
instance of the jealousy between the civil and military branches of
the naval organization, which, as is well known, resulted in constant
strained relations between the Admiralty and the Naval Commissioners,