derful contrast or relation between his personal qualities, the
position which he held, and the life that he lived, makes him as
interesting a personage as all history has to show; and it is a pity
that Southey's biography--so good in its superficial way, and yet so
inadequate as regards any real delineation of the man--should have taken
the subject out of the hands of some writer endowed with more delicate
appreciation and deeper insight than that genuine Englishman possessed.

But the English capacity for hero-worship is full to the brim with what
they are able to comprehend of Lord Nelson's character. Adjoining the
Painted Hall is a smaller room, the walls of which are completely and
exclusively adorned with pictures of the great Admiral's exploits. We
see the frail, ardent man in all the most noted events of his career,
from his encounter with a Polar bear to his death at Trafalgar,
quivering here and there about the room like a blue, lambent flame. No
Briton ever enters that apartment without feeling the beef and ale of
his composition stirred to its depths, and finding himself changed into
a hero for the nonce, however stolid his brain, however tough his heart,
however unexcitable his ordinary mood. To confess the truth, I myself,
though belonging to another parish, have been deeply sensible to the
sublime recollections there aroused, acknowledging that Nelson expressed
his life in a kind of symbolic poetry which I had as much right to
understand as these burly islanders. Cool and critical observer as I
sought to be, I enjoyed their burst of honest indignation when a visitor
(not an American, I am glad to say) thrust his walking-stick almost into
Nelson's face, in one of the pictures, by way of pointing a remark; and
the by-standers immediately glowed like so many hot coals, and would
probably have consumed the offender in their wrath, had he not effected
his retreat. But the most sacred objects of all are two of Nelson's
coats, under separate glass cases. One is that which he wore at the
Battle of the Nile, and it is now sadly injured by moths, which will
quite destroy it in a few years, unless its guardians preserve it as we
do Washington's military suit, by occasionally baking it in an oven. The
other is the coat in which he received his death-wound at Trafalgar. On
its breast are sewed three or four stars and orders of knighthood, now
much dimmed by time and damp, but which glittered brightly enough on the
batt