y God having blessed His Majesty's arms with victory, the
Admiral intends returning Public Thanksgiving for the same at
two o'clock this day; and he recommends every ship doing the
same as soon as convenient.

HORATIO NELSON.

To those under his command he at the same time issued a general
order, congratulating, by explicit mention of each class, the
captains, officers, seamen, and marines, upon the event of the
conflict. "The Admiral desires they will accept his most sincere and
cordial thanks for their very gallant behaviour in this glorious
battle." It was this habit of associating to himself, in full
recognition and grateful remembrance, those who followed and fought
with him, that enthroned Nelson in the affections of his men; nor will
it escape observation that the warmth, though so genuine, breathes
through words whose quietness might be thought studied, were they not
so transparently spontaneous. There is in them no appeal to egotism,
to the gratified passion for glory, although to that he was far from
insensible; it is the simple speech of man to man, between those who
have stood by one another in the hour of danger, and done their
duty--the acknowledgment after the event, which is the complement of
the famous signal before Trafalgar.

The order closed with further words of commendation, which will not
have the immortal response of the human heart to the other phrases;
but which, uttered at such a moment, conveyed a salutary warning,
justified as much by recent unhappy events in the British navy, as by
the well-known disorganization and anarchy that had disgraced that of
France. "It must strike forcibly every British seaman, how superior
their conduct is, _when in discipline and good order_, to the riotous
behaviour of lawless Frenchmen."[67] Captain Berry states that the
assembling of the "Vanguard's" ship's company for the thanksgiving
service strongly impressed the prisoners on board,--not from the
religious point of view, which was alien from the then prevalent
French temper,--but as evidence of an order and discipline which could
render such a proceeding acceptable, after a victory so great, and at
a moment of such seeming confusion. No small amount of
self-possession, indeed, was needed thus to direct the attention of
six hundred men, in the confined space of a ship, whose shattered
sides and blood-stained decks bore witness to the hundred dead and
wounded snatched from their number wi