ship was paid off last week, and in such a
manner that must flatter any officer, in particular in these turbulent
times. The whole ship's company offered, if I could get a ship, to
enter for her immediately." Nelson was keenly alive to the impolicy
and injury to the service involved in the frequent changes of officers
and men from ship to ship. "The disgust of the seamen to the Navy," he
wrote immediately after leaving the Albemarle, "is all owing to the
infernal plan of turning them over from ship to ship, so that men
cannot be attached to their officers, or the officers care twopence
about them." This element of personal attachment is never left out of
calculation safely.

Nelson was now nearly twenty-five. In direct achievement he had
accomplished little, and to most he was unknown; but he did not
deceive himself in believing that his reputation was established, and
his promise, as a capable man of action, understood by those who knew
him, and especially by the brilliant admiral under whom he had last
served. Within a week of his release from the ship Hood carried him to
Court, and presented him to the King,--an evident proof of his
approbation; and Nelson notes that the sovereign was exceedingly
attentive. The next few months were spent in London, or at his old
home in Norfolk, to which and to his family he was always fondly
attached. Toward the end of October he obtained a leave of absence, in
order to visit France and acquire the French language. His impressions
of that country, as far as he went,--from Calais to St. Omer,--are
given in lively enough style in a few letters; but they differ little
from what might be expected from any very young man deeply tinged with
insular prejudice. "I hate their country and their manners," he wrote,
soon after his return; and his biographers were quite right in saying
that he had been brought up in the old anti-Gallican school, with
prejudices not to be eradicated by a flying visit. He duly records his
disgust with two British naval captains, one of whom was afterwards
among his most valued and valuable friends, for wearing epaulettes, at
that time confined to the French service. "I hold them a little
_cheap_," he said, "for putting on any part of a Frenchman's uniform."

It is more interesting to notice that his impressionable fancy was
again taken by an attractive young Englishwoman, the daughter of a
clergyman named Andrews, living at St. Omer. "Two very beautiful young
la