nfully against enforced inaction and
delay. His manner of bearing it illustrated both the religious
characteristics, which the experience of grave emergencies tends to
develop and strengthen in men of action, and the firmness of a really
great man, never more signally displayed than under the pressure of
calamity and suspense, such as he continually had to undergo. The
exceptional brilliancy and decisiveness of his greater battles--the
Nile, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar--obscure the fact that each of them
was preceded by a weary period of strenuous uphill work, a steady
hewing of his way through a tanglewood of obstacles, a patient
endurance of disappointments, a display of sustained, undaunted
resolution under discouragements, nobler far than even the moments of
triumphant action, into which at last he joyfully emerges and freely
exerts his extraordinary powers. "I trust," he wrote to St. Vincent,
"my friends will think I bore my chastisement like a man. I hope it
has made me a better officer, as I believe it has made me a better
man. On the Sunday evening I thought myself in every respect one of
the most fortunate men, to command such a squadron in such a place,
and my pride was too great for man." To his wife he wrote in the same
strain: "I ought not to call what has happened to the Vanguard by the
cold name of accident; I believe firmly that it was the Almighty's
goodness, to check my consummate vanity."

Vanity was rather a hard name to call the natural elation of a young
admiral, intrusted with an unusually important service, and proud of
his command; but the providential interposition worked directly to his
advantage. The delays caused by the repairs to the "Vanguard," and by
the subsequent necessity of seeking the separated frigates at the
rendezvous appointed for such a case, made possible the junction of
Troubridge, of whose approach Nelson was totally ignorant. On the 2d
of June Sir James Saumarez mentions speaking a ship, which a few days
before had seen eleven sail-of-the-line, supposed to be English. "We
are at a loss what conjectures to put on this intelligence." Five days
before this, May 28, a vessel out of Marseilles had informed them of
Bonaparte's sailing with all his transports. Nelson would doubtless
have pursued them at once, in conformity with his instructions to
ascertain the enemy's objects; but for such operations, essentially
those of a scouting expedition, the frigates were too necessary to be