professional judgment and self-reliance for which these early
experiences stood him in good stead. As he afterwards wrote to the
First Lord of the Admiralty, when pleading the cause of a daring and
skilful officer who had run his ship ashore: "If I had been censured
every time I have run my ship, or fleets under my command, into great
danger, I should long ago have been _out_ of the service, and never
_in_ the House of Peers." At the critical instants of the Nile and
Copenhagen, as well as in the less conspicuous but more prolonged
anxieties of the operations off Corsica and along the Riviera of
Genoa, this early habit, grafted upon the singularly steady nerve
wherewith he was endowed by nature, sustained him at a height of
daring and achievement to which very few have been able to rise.

The other incident recorded by him as happening while on board the
"Lowestoffe," he himself cites as illustrative of temperament. "Whilst
in this frigate, an event happened which presaged my character; and,
as it conveys no dishonour to the officer alluded to, I shall insert
it. Blowing a gale of wind, and a very heavy sea, the frigate captured
an American letter-of-marque. The first Lieutenant was ordered to
board her, which he did not do, owing to the very heavy sea. On his
return, the Captain said, 'Have I no officer in the ship who can board
the prize?' On which the Master ran to the gangway, to get into the
boat: when I stopped him, saying, 'It is my turn now; and if I come
back, it is yours.' This little incident," he continues, "has often
occurred to my mind; and I know it is my disposition, that
difficulties and dangers do but increase my desire of attempting
them." An action of this sort, in its results unimportant, gives
keener satisfaction in the remembrance than do greater deeds, because
more purely individual,--entirely one's own. It is upon such as this,
rather than upon his victories, that Nelson in his narrative dwells