trict thus assigned to him was taken out of the commands
hitherto held by some very reputable admirals, senior to himself, who
otherwise retained their previous charges, surrounding and touching
his own; while at the Scheldt he trenched closely upon the province of
the commander-in-chief in the North Sea. Such circumstances are
extremely liable to cause friction and bad blood, and St. Vincent, who
with all his despotism was keenly alive to the just susceptibilities
of meritorious officers, was very careful to explain to them that he
had with the greatest reluctance yielded to the necessity of
combining the preparations for defence under a single flag-officer,
who should have no other care. The innate tact, courtesy, and
thoughtful consideration which distinguished Nelson, when in normal
conditions, removed all other misunderstandings. "The delicacy you
have always shown to senior officers," wrote St. Vincent to him, "is a
sure presage of your avoiding by every means in your power to give
umbrage to Admiral Dickson, who seems disposed to judge favourably of
the intentions of us all: it is, in truth, the most difficult card we
have to play." "Happy should I be," he said at another time, "to place
the whole of our offensive and defensive war under your auspices, but
you are well aware of the difficulties on that head." From first to
last there is no trace of a serious jar, and Nelson's instructions to
his subordinates were such as to obviate the probability of any. "I
feel myself, my dear Lord," he wrote St. Vincent, relative to a
projected undertaking on the Dutch coast, "as anxious to get a medal,
or a step in the peerage as if I had never got either. If I succeeded,
and burnt the Dutch fleet, probably medals and an earldom. I must have
had every desire to try the matter, regardless of the feelings of
others; but I should not have been your Nelson, that wants not to take
honours or rewards from any man; and if ever I feel great, it is, my
dear Lord, in never having, in thought, word, or deed, robbed any man
of his fair fame."

He was accompanied from London by a young commander, Edward Parker,
who seems first to have become known to him in the Baltic, and who now
acted as an additional aide. The latter was filled with the
admiration, felt by most of those thrown into contact with Nelson, for
the rapidity with which he transacted business, and set all about him
in movement. "He is the cleverest and quickest man, and the m