not lightly broken, and to the "Agamemnon"
Nelson clave for three long years and more, persistently refusing
larger ships, until the exhausted hulk could no longer respond to the
demands of her masters, and separation became inevitable. When he
quitted her, at the moment of her departure for England, it was simply
a question whether he would abandon the Mediterranean, and the
prospect of a great future there opening before him, or sever a few
weeks earlier a companionship which must in any event end upon her
arrival home.

There is yet another point of view from which his command of the
"Agamemnon" is seen to hold a peculiar relation to Nelson's story.
This was the period in which expectation passed into fulfilment, when
development, long arrested by unpropitious circumstances, resumed its
outward progress under the benign influence of a favoring environment,
and the bud, whose rare promise had long been noted by a few
discerning eyes, unfolded into the brilliant flower, destined in the
magnificence of its maturity to draw the attention of a world. To the
fulness of his glorious course these three years were what the days of
early manhood are to ripened age; and they are marked by the same
elasticity, hopefulness, and sanguine looking to the future that
characterize youth, before illusions vanish and even success is found
to disappoint. Happiness was his then, as at no other time before or
after; for the surrounding conditions of enterprise, of difficulties
to be overcome, and dangers to be met, were in complete
correspondence with those native powers that had so long struggled
painfully for room to exert themselves. His health revived, and his
very being seemed to expand in this congenial atmosphere, which to him
was as life from the dead. As with untiring steps he sped onward and
upward,--counting naught done while aught remained to do, forgetting
what was behind as he pressed on to what was before,--the ardor of
pursuit, the delight of achievement, the joy of the giant running his
course, sustained in him that glow of animation, that gladness in the
mere fact of existence, physical or moral, in which, if anywhere, this
earth's content is found. Lack of recognition, even, wrung from him
only the undaunted words: "Never mind! some day I will have a gazette
of my own." Not till his dreams were realized, till aspiration had
issued in the completest and most brilliant triumph ever wrought upon
the seas, and he had for h