middle of the century--the War of the Austrian Succession, 1739-1748,
and the Seven Years War, 1756-1763. These two conflicts are practically
one; the same characteristic jealousies and motives being common to
both, as they were also to the period of nominal peace, but scarcely
veiled contention, by which they were separated. The difference of age
between the two admirals contributed not only to obviate rivalry, by
throwing their distinctive activities into different generations, but
had, as it were, the effect of prolonging their influence beyond that
possible to a single lifetime, thus constituting it into a continuous
and fruitful development.

They were both successful men, in the ordinary acceptation of the word
success. They were great, not only in professional character, but in the
results which do not always attend professional desert; they were great
in achievement. Each name is indissolubly linked with a brilliant
victory, as well as with other less known but equally meritorious
actions; in all of which the personal factor of the principal agent, the
distinctive qualities of the commander-in-chief, powerfully contributed
and were conspicuously illustrated. These were, so to say, the examples,
that enforced upon the men of their day the professional ideas by which
the two admirals were themselves dominated, and upon which was forming a
school, with professional standards of action and achievement destined
to produce great effects.

Yet, while this is so, and while such emphatic demonstrations by deeds
undoubtedly does more than any other teaching to influence
contemporaries, and so to promote professional development, it is
probably true that, as a matter of historical illustration, the advance
of the eighteenth century in naval warfare is more clearly shown by two
great failures, for neither of which were these officers responsible,