lf too narrow a margin, based upon an under-valuation of the
enemy not far removed from contempt. It was most fortunate for him, in
the Baltic, that Parker increased to twelve the detachment he himself
had fixed at ten. The last utterances of his life, however, show a
distinct advance and ripening of the judgment, without the slightest
decrease of the heroic resolution that so characterized him. "I have
twenty-three sail with me," he wrote a fortnight before Trafalgar,
"and should they come out I will immediately bring them to battle; ...
but I am _very, very, very_ anxious for the arrival of the force which
is intended. It is, as Mr. Pitt knows, annihilation that the country
wants, and not merely a splendid victory of twenty-three to
thirty-six. Numbers only can annihilate."

The assumption that Bonaparte's plan would be such as he mentioned,
naturally controlled Nelson in the dispositions he sketched for the
local defence of the shore lines. The invasion being in two bodies,
the defence was to be in two bodies also; nor is there any suggestion
of a possibility that these two might be united against one of the
enemy's. The whole scheme is dual; yet, although the chance of either
division of the British being largely inferior to the enemy opposed to
it is recognized, the adoption of a central position, or concentration
upon either of the enemy's flotillas, apparently is not contemplated.
Such uncertainty of touch, when not corrected by training, is the
natural characteristic of a defence essentially passive; that is, of a
defence which proposes to await the approach of the enemy to its own
frontier, be that land or water. Yet it scarcely could have failed
soon to occur to men of Nelson's and St. Vincent's martial capacities,
that a different disposition, which would clearly enable them to unite
and intercept either one of the enemy's divisions, must wreck the
entire project; for the other twenty thousand men alone could not do
serious or lasting injury. The mere taking a position favorable to
such concentration would be an adequate check. The trouble for them
undoubtedly was that which overloads, and so nullifies, all schemes
for coast defence resting upon popular outcry, which demands outward
and visible protection for every point, and assurance that people at
war shall be guarded, not only against broken bones, but against even
scratches of the skin.

This uneducated and weak idea, that protection is only adequate wh