rated the progress of his public
career, which may have blessed or embittered his private comforts; is
the arduous task of the present biographer: who holds, with a trembling;
hand, the pen that would presumptuously aspire to record, with suitable
dignity, the history of one of the very greatest and most successful
naval heroes that has ever yet astonished and adorned the world.

Lord Nelson, Duke of Bronte--for he always, very properly, signed with
both these titles, from the moment of obtaining them--was the offspring
of parents on each side highly respectable.

The family of the Nelsons had been long resident in the county of
Norfolk: they possessed, for many years, and their posterity still
possess, a small patrimony at Hilborough, with the patronage of that
rectory.

The Sucklings, likewise a Norfolk family, of lofty alliances, have been
resident at Wooton nearly three centuries.

On the 11th of May, in the year 1749, the Reverend Edmund Nelson, son
of the then venerable Rector of Hilborough, and himself Rector of
Burnham-Thorpe, was married to Catharine daughter of Dr. Maurice
Suckling, Rector of Basham in Suffolk, as well as of Wooton in Norfolk,
and a Prebendary of Westminster.

By this union the Nelson family gained the honour of being related to
the noble families of Walpole, Cholmondeley, and Townshend: Miss
Suckling being the grand-daughter of Sir Charles Turner, Bart. of
Warham, in the county of Norfolk, by Mary, daughter of Robert Walpole,
Esq. of Houghton, and sister to Sir Robert Walpole, of Wolterton, whose
next sister, Dorothy, was married to Charles, second Viscount Townshend.

The honour, however, so conferred, has since been abundantly recompenced
to all these illustrious families, by a single Nelson, the offspring of
this very union; to whom, in their turn, they may now proudly boast
their alliance, without any degradation of dignity.

Of these virtuous and most respectable parents, was Horatio Lord
Viscount Nelson born, at the parsonage house of the rectory of
Burnham-Thorpe, on Michaelmas-day 1758: a place which will be ever
renowned for having given him birth; and a day of annual festivity,
which every Briton has now an additional motive to commemorate.

He was their fifth son, and their sixth child: his eldest sister, Mrs.
Bolton, the amiable lady of Thomas Bolton, Esq. by whom she has a son
and four daughters, being about three years older than her renowned
brother.

There had been