ho were most
dear to the heart of the hero, in consanguinity as well as amity, have
many of those valuable anecdotes been obtained, with which the work is
so abundantly enriched.

Prompted to this undertaking, by a strong sense of conviction, that our
chief hero, when his character was clearly understood, would be found as
eminently good as great, the biographer has fearlessly endeavoured
freely to investigate transactions of the utmost delicacy in private
life; and he is fully prepared to assert, and as far as possible to
prove, that there seldom has existed any human being adorned by the
practice of so many positive virtues, so little sullied by any actual
vice, as that immortal man, the chief particulars of whose history will
be found, the author may, at least, be permitted to maintain, most
faithfully recorded in the work now confided, with all it's
imperfections, to the just judgment of the world; a tribunal which
seldom fails doing compleat justice, either sooner or later, to all the
merits both of heroes and of authors, of men as well as of books.

THE LIFE
OF
_LORD NELSON_,
DUKE OF BRONTE, &c.

* * * * *

When we survey, with rapture, the state of an exalted hero, arrived at
all the honours which it is possible for a human being to receive from
the gratitude, the veneration, and the love, of his fellow-mortals;
seen, as he then is, like a luminary of the first magnitude in the full
blaze of meridian glory, we are generally too dazzled by the lustre we
behold, to penetrate, or even to reflect on, the circuitous, the
tedious, or the perplexed path, through which he may have been
constrained to pass, in pursuit of the splendid destiny at length
happily attained.

In this sublime situation, we have lately beheld a British naval hero,
who has scarcely ever been equalled, and certainly never surpassed. As a
nation, we have been charmed with his brilliant refulgence; we have been
cheared by his vivifying influence; and we lament the short duration of
his splendor with a grief so general, that it appears to be without
parallel in the history of any age or country.

To trace the progress of this heroic and inestimable character, through
the various vicissitudes of his eventful life, from it's commencement to
it's close, with all the accuracy and minuteness which circumstances
will admit; contemplating and comparing the several causes and effects
which may have retarded or accele