inclination, is evident--undisguised; but they could not prevail. On
the 4th of March he wrote to Lady Hamilton: "My health is in such a
state, and to say the truth, an uneasy mind at being taught my lesson
like a school boy, that my DETERMINATION is made to leave Malta on the
15th morning of this month, on the first moment after the wind comes
favourable; unless I am SURE that I shall get hold of the French
ships." Keith's directions had been full and explicit on details, and
this Nelson seems to have resented. Among the particular orders was
one that Palermo, being so distant from Malta, should be discontinued
as the rendezvous, and Syracuse substituted for it; Nelson was,
however, at liberty to use Messina or Augusta, both also on the west
coast of Sicily, if he preferred. It will be remembered that Nelson
himself, before he fell under the influence of Naples, had expressed
his intention to make Syracuse the base of his operations. Coming as
this change did, as one of the first acts of a new commander-in-chief,
coinciding with his own former judgment, it readily took the color of
an implied censure upon his prolonged stay at Palermo--an echo of the
increasing scandal that attended it.

On the 10th of March he left Malta for Palermo in the "Foudroyant,"
sending the ship back, however, to take her place in the blockade, and
hoisting his own flag on board a transport. His mind was now rapidly
turning towards a final retirement from the station, a decision which
was accelerated by the capture of the "Guillaume Tell." This
eighty-gun ship started on the night of March 29th to run out from La
Valetta, to relieve the famished garrison from feeding the twelve
hundred men she carried. Fortunately, the "Foudroyant" had resumed her
station off the island; and it was a singular illustration of the good
fortune of the "heaven-born" admiral, to repeat Ball's expression,
that she arrived barely in time, only a few hours before the event,