onour to command, was conspicuous; they
seemed animated with the same spirit, and were eager to exert themselves
with the utmost zeal." Here also, however, he was biding his time for
obvious reasons; for to his wife he writes, "I have done them all like
honour, but it is because I would not have the world believe that there
were officers slack in their duty. Without a thorough change in naval
affairs, the discipline of our navy will be lost. I could say much, but
will not. You will hear of it from _themselves_;" that is, probably, by
their mutual recriminations. Such indulgent envelopment of good and bad
alike in a common mantle of commendation is far from unexampled; but it
rarely fails to return to plague its authors, as has been seen in
instances more recent than that of Rodney. He clearly had told Sandwich
the same in private letters, for the First Lord writes him, "I fear the
picture you give of the faction in your fleet is too well drawn. Time
and moderation will by degrees get the better of this bane of
discipline. I exceedingly applaud your resolution to shut your ears
against the illiberal language of your officers, who are inclined to
arraign each other's conduct." In this two things are to be remarked:
first, the evident and undeniable existence of serious cause of
complaint, which was preparing Rodney for the stern self-assertion soon
to be shown; and, second, that such imputations are frequent with him,
while he seems in turn to have had a capacity for eliciting
insubordination of feeling, though he can repress the act. It is a
question of personal temperament, which explains more than his relations
with other men. Hawke and Nelson find rare fault with those beneath
them; for their own spirit takes possession of their subordinates. Such
difference of spirit reveals itself in more ways than one in the active
life of a military community.

If there was joy in England over Rodney's achievement, still more and
more sympathetic was the exultation of those who in the isolation of
Gibraltar's Rock, rarely seeing their country's flag save on their own
flagstaff, witnessed and shared the triumph of his entrance there with
his train of prizes. The ships of war and transports forming the convoy
did not indeed appear in one body, but in groups, being dispersed by the
light airs, and swept eastward by the in-drag of the current from the
Atlantic to the Mediterranean; but the presence of the great fleet, and
the prestige