n with Hood.
Between these there is an identity of kind, an orderly sequence of
development, an organic bond, such as knits together the series of a
progressive evolution. It is not so with Jervis. Closely conjoined as
the two men long were in a common service, and in mutual admiration and
sympathy, it would be an error to think of the elder as in any sense the
professional progenitor of the younger; yet he was, as it were, an
adoptive father, who from the first fostered, and to the last gloried
in, the genius which he confessed unparalleled. "It does not become me
to make comparisons," he wrote after Copenhagen; "all agree that there
is but one Nelson." And when the great admiral had been ten years in his
grave, he said of an officer's gallant conduct at the Battle of Algiers,
"He seems to have felt Lord Nelson's eye upon him;" as though no
stronger motive could be felt nor higher praise given.

John Jervis was born on the 20th of January, 1735, at Meaford, in
Staffordshire. He was intended for his father's profession, the law;
but, by his own account, a disinclination which was probably natural
became invincible through the advice of the family coachman. "Don't be a
lawyer, Master Jacky," said the old man; "all lawyers are rogues."
Sometime later, his father receiving the appointment of auditor to
Greenwich Hospital, the family removed to the neighborhood of London;
and there young Jervis, being thrown in contact with ships and seamen,
and particularly with a midshipman of his own age, became confirmed in
his wish to go to sea. Failing to get his parents' consent, he ran away
towards the close of the year 1747. From this escapade he was brought
back; but his father, seeing the uselessness of forcing the lad's
inclinations, finally acquiesced, though it seems likely, from his after
conduct, that it was long before he became thoroughly reconciled to the
disappointment.

In January, 1748, the future admiral and peer first went afloat in a
ship bound to the West Indies. The time was inauspicious for one making
the navy his profession. The war of the Austrian succession had just
been brought to an end by the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, and the
monotonous discomfort of hard cruising, unrelieved by the excitements of
battle or the flush of prize-taking, was the sole prospect of one whose
narrow means debarred him from such pleasures as the station afforded
and youth naturally prompted him to seek. His pay was little over twen