to distinguish light from darkness. For all
purposes of use it was gone; but the blemish was not to be perceived,
unless attention was drawn to it.

At Leghorn the ship lay for a month,--the first period of repose since
she went into commission, a year and a half before. While there, the
physician to the fleet came on board and surveyed the crew, finding
them in a very weak state, and unfit to serve. This condition of
things gave Nelson hopes that, upon the approaching departure of Lord
Hood for England, the "Agamemnon" might go with him; for he was loath
to separate from an admiral whose high esteem he had won, and upon
whom he looked as the first sea-officer of Great Britain. Hood was
inclined to take her, and to transfer the ship's company bodily to a
seventy-four. This he considered no more than due to Nelson's
distinguished merit and services, and he had indeed offered him each
ship of that rate whose command fell vacant in the Mediterranean; but
the strong sense of attachment to those who had shared his toils and
dangers, of reluctance that they should see him willing to leave them,
after their hard work together,--that combination of sympathy and tact
which made so much of Nelson's success as a leader of men,--continued
to prevent his accepting promotion that would sever his ties to them.

The exigencies of the war in the Mediterranean forbade the departure,
even of a sixty-four with a disabled crew. A full month later her
sick-list was still seventy-seven, out of a total of less than four
hundred. "Though certainly unfit for a long cruise," Nelson said, "we
are here making a show,"--a military requirement not to be neglected
or despised. He accepted the disappointment, as he did all service
rubs at this period, with perfect temper and in the best spirit. "We
must not repine," he wrote to his wife on the 12th of October, the day
after Hood sailed for England. "Lord Hood is very well inclined
towards me, but the service must ever supersede all private
consideration. I hope you will spend the winter cheerfully. Do not
repine at my absence; before spring I hope we shall have peace, when
we must look out for some little cottage." She fretted, however, as
some women will; and he, to comfort her, wrote more sanguinely about
himself than the facts warranted. "Why you should be uneasy about me,
so as to make yourself ill, I know not. I feel a confident protection
in whatever service I may be employed upon; and as to my