In this sense of the word, types are permanent; for such are not the
exclusive possession of any age or of any service, but are found and are
essential in every period and to every nation. Their functions are part
of the bed-rock of naval organization and of naval strategy, throughout
all time; and the particular instances here selected owe their special
cogency mainly to the fact that they are drawn from a naval era,
1739-1815, of exceptional activity and brilliancy.

There is, however, another sense in which an officer, or a man, may be
accurately called a type; a sense no less significant, but of more
limited and transient application. The tendency of a period,--especially
when one of marked transition,--its activities and its results, not
infrequently find expression in one or more historical characters. Such
types may perhaps more accurately be called personifications; the man or
men embodying, and in action realizing, ideas and processes of thought,
the progress of which is at the time united, but is afterwards
recognized as a general characteristic of the period. Between the
beginning and the end a great change is found to have been effected,
which naturally and conveniently is associated with the names of the
most conspicuous actors; although they are not the sole agents, but
simply the most eminent.

It is in this sense more particularly that Hawke and Rodney are
presented as types. It might even be said that they complement each
other and constitute together a single type; for, while both were men of
unusually strong personality, private as well as professional, and with
very marked traits of character, their great relation to naval advance
is that of men who by natural faculty detect and seize upon incipient
ideas, for which the time is ripe, and upon the practical realization of
which the healthful development of the profession depends. With these