and in his correspondence he attributes the Morea and the islands, now
to one, now to the other; but the prediction, elicited piece-meal from
his letters, received a close fulfilment four years later in the
general tenor of the agreements of Tilsit, nor was it less accurate in
its dim prophecy of a disagreement.

Such, in broad outline, were the prepossessions and views Nelson took
with him from England in 1803, as modified by the information he
received upon reaching the station; and such the counter-projects of
Bonaparte, to whom belonged, as the privilege of the offensive, the
choice of direction for his attack. The essential difference between
the two was, that one believed the invasion of England, however
difficult, to be possible, and therefore to be the true and first
object of his efforts; while the other, without pronouncing that
attempt impossible, saw its difficulties so clearly, that he conceived
his enemy must be aiming for the Mediterranean from the beginning. It
is permissible to remark that Bonaparte, after the failure of the
invasion, first busied himself in reducing Austria, Prussia, and
Russia, successively, to the state of inaction in which they were in
1803; next came to an understanding with the latter, such as Nelson
had foreseen; and then turned to the Mediterranean, where he
established his own rule in Naples, in the Ionian Islands, on the
eastern shore of the Adriatic, and finally in the Spanish peninsula.
Beyond that his advance was stayed by the Sea Power of Great Britain,
which at last wrought his ruin. Thus in the event the predictions of
the British admiral were postponed, but not falsified.

Nelson's characteristic impatience and energy hurried him on from the
moment he took up his command. "I cannot sail before to-morrow," he
said repeatedly in Portsmouth, "and that's an age." "If the Devil
stands at the door," he tells St. Vincent, "we shall sail to-morrow
forenoon." The Admiralty, in its primary anxiety about Brest, imposed
upon him a delay under which he chafed angrily. He was directed to
meet off that port the squadron of Admiral Cornwallis, in order that,
if the latter wanted the "Victory," she might be left there, and an
intimation was even given that he was "on no account to pass Admiral
Cornwallis, so as to run any chance of his being deprived of the
services of the Victory, if he should judge it necessary to detain
her." Nelson resented the implication that he was capable of e