one else from the
interruption of the trade, but he considered that the young captain
had done only his duty. Possibly there may have been a warmer feeling
underlying this esteem, for he was the uncle of the lady whom Nelson
afterwards married, and to whom he seems to have been paying attention
already.

Despite his indomitable pluck and resolve, the confinement,
uncertainty, and contention told heavily on Nelson's health and
spirits. His temper was too kindly and social not to feel the general
alienation. It could not affect his purpose; but the sense of
right-doing, which sustained him in that, did not make his road
otherwise easier. It is, indeed, especially to be noticed that there
was not in him that hard, unyielding fibre, upon which care, or
neglect, or anxiety, makes little impression. He was, on the contrary,
extremely sympathetic, even emotional; and although insensible to
bodily fear, he was by no means so to censure, or to risk of other
misfortune. To this susceptibility to worry, strong witness is borne
by an expression of his, used at the very time of which we are now
writing. One of his friends--Captain Pole of the Navy--had detained
and sent in a neutral vessel for breach of belligerent rights. After
long legal proceedings, extending over five years, she was condemned,
and proved to be a very valuable prize to the captors. "Our friend
Charles Pole," he writes, "has been fortunate in his trial; but the
lottery is so very much against an officer, that never will I
knowingly involve myself in a doubtful cause. Prize-money is doubtless
very acceptable; but my mind would have suffered so much, that no
pecuniary compensation, at so late a period, would have made me
amends." Contrasting this utterance with the resolution shown by him
at this time, in fighting what he considered the cause of his country
in the West Indies, it can be seen how much stronger with him was the
influence of duty than that exercised by any considerations of merely
material advantage. In the one he could find support; in the other
not. But in neither case was he insensible to care, nor could he
escape the physical consequences of anxiety upon a delicate frame and
nervous organization. Of this, his harassment in the pursuit of the
French fleet in 1798, during Bonaparte's Egyptian expedition, gave a
very conspicuous illustration.

With such a temperament, being now very much in the position of an
individual fighting a corporation, he a