t cruise in the Channel,
and a few days later sailed as one of a division of five
ships-of-the-line under Admiral Hotham, to occupy a station fifty to
a hundred miles west of the Channel Islands. Nelson's disposition not
to form any opinion of his own respecting the propriety of orders was
thus evidenced: "What we have been sent out for is best known to the
great folks in London: to us, it appears, only to hum the nation and
make tools of us, for where we have been stationed no enemy was likely
to be met with, or where we could protect our own trade." There can be
no doubt that not only was the practical management of the Navy at
this time exceedingly bad, but that no sound ideas even prevailed upon
the subject. Hotham's squadron gained from neutral vessels two
important pieces of information,--that Nantes, Bordeaux, and L'Orient
were filled with English vessels, prizes to French cruisers; and that
the enemy kept eight sail-of-the-line, with frigates in proportion,
constantly moving in detachments about the Bay of Biscay. Under the
dispositions adopted by the British Admiralty, these hostile divisions
gave, to the commerce destroying of the smaller depredators, a support
that sufficiently accounts for the notorious sufferings of British
trade during the opening years of the war. Nelson had no mastery of
the terminology of warfare,--he never talked about strategy and little
about tactics,--but, though without those valuable aids to precision
of thought, he had pondered, studied, and reasoned, and he had,
besides, what is given to few,--real genius and insight. Accordingly
he at once pierced to the root of the trouble,--the enemy's squadrons,
rather than the petty cruisers dependent upon them, to which the
damage was commonly attributed. "They are always at sea, and England
not willing to send a squadron to interrupt them." But, while
instancing this intuitive perception of a man gifted with rare
penetration, it is necessary to guard against rash conclusions that
might be drawn from it, and to remark that it by no means follows that
education is unnecessary to the common run of men, because a genius
is in advance of his times. It is well also to note that even in him
this flash of insight, though unerring in its indications, lacked the
definiteness of conviction which results from ordered thought. However
accurate, it is but a glimmer,--not yet a fixed light.

Hotham's division joined the main body under Lord Hood, off th