published accounts, as well could be.

Nelson knew the great superiority of the English seamen, their facility
in repairing damages, and most of all the high advantage possessed by
the fleets of his country, in the exercise of the assumed right to
impress, a practice that put not only the best seamen of his own
country, but those of the whole world, more or less, at his mercy. His
great merit, at the Nile, was in the just appreciation of these
advantages, and in the extraordinary decision which led him to go into
action just at nightfall, rather than give his enemy time to prepare to
meet the shock.

It is now known that the French were taken, in a great measure, by
surprise. A large portion of their crews were on shore, and did not get
off to their ships at all, and there was scarce a vessel that did not
clear the decks, by tumbling the mess-chests, bags, &c, into the inside
batteries, rendering them, in a measure, useless, when the English
doubled on their line.

It was this doubling on the French line, by anchoring inside, and
putting two ships upon one, that gave Nelson so high a reputation as a
tactician. The merit of this man[oe]uvre belongs exclusively to one of
his captains. As the fleet went in, without any order, keeping as much
to windward as the shoals would permit, Nelson ordered the Vanguard
hove-to, to take a pilot out of a fisherman. This enabled Foley, Hood,
and one or two more to pass that fast ship. It was at this critical
moment that the thought occurred to Foley (we think this was the
officer) to pass the head of the French line, keep dead away, and anchor
inside. Others followed, completely placing their enemies between two
fires. Sir Samuel Hood anchored his ship (the Zealous) on the inner bow
of the most weatherly French ship, where he poured his fire into,
virtually; an unresisting enemy. Notwithstanding the great skill
manifested by the English in their mode of attack, this was the only
two-decked ship in the English fleet that was able to make sail on the
following morning.

Had Nelson led in upon an American fleet, as he did upon the French at
the Nile, he would have seen reason to repent the boldness of the
experiment. Something like it _was_ attempted on Lake Champlain, though
on a greatly diminished scale, and the English were virtually defeated
before they anchored.

The reader who feels an interest in such subjects, will probably detect
the secret process of the mind, by which som