very man spoke well.'
The 'tremendous powers' intrusted to him by the Council of State, he
exercised with off-handed and masterly success--startling politicians
and officials of the _ancien regime_ by his bold and open tactics, and
his contempt for tortuous bypaths in diplomacy. His wondrous exploits
were performed with extreme poverty of means. He was the first to
repudiate and disprove the supposed fundamental maxim in marine
warfare, that no ship could attack a castle, or other strong
fortification, with any hope of success. The early part of his naval
career was occupied in opposing and defeating the piratical
performances of Prince Rupert, which then constituted the support of
the exiled Stuarts, and which Mr Dixon refuses to interpret in such
mild colours as Warburton and others. Blake's utmost vigilance and
activity were required to put down this extraordinary system of
freebooting; and by the time that he had successively overcome Rupert,
and the minor but stubborn adventurers, Grenville and Carteret, he was
in request to conduct the formidable war with Holland, and to cope
with such veterans as Tromp, De Witt, De Ruyter, &c. Of the various
encounters in which he thus signalised himself, his biographer gives
most spirited descriptions, such as their length alone deters us from
quoting. On one occasion only did Blake suffer a defeat; and this one
is easily explained by--first, Tromp's overwhelming superiority of
force; secondly, the extreme deficiency of men in the English fleet;
and thirdly, the cowardice or disaffection of several of Blake's
captains at a critical moment in the battle. Notwithstanding this
disaster, not a whisper was heard against the admiral either in the
Council of State or in the city; his offer to resign was flatteringly
rejected; and he soon found, that the 'misfortune which might have
ruined another man, had given him strength and influence in the
country.' This disaster, in fact, gave him power to effect reforms in
the service, and to root out abuses which had defied all his efforts
in the day of his success. He followed it up by the great battle of
Portland, and other triumphant engagements.

Then came his sweeping _tours de force_ in the Mediterranean; in six
months he established himself, as Mr Dixon says, as a power in that
great midland sea, from which his countrymen had been politically
excluded since the age of the Crusades--teaching nations, to which
England's very name was a st