admiration, than I would
maintain friendship with one for whom I had no affection.

Doubtless there also was in Pitt's manner of speech, in the cast of
his sentences,--the style that is the man himself,--something which
appealed especially to me. Often, when reading in the Public Library
of New York a passage of unusual eloquence, I would be strongly moved
to rise on the spot and give three cheers; and I heartily subscribed
to a Latin motto on the title-page of the edition I was using: If you
could but have heard himself. But it was more than that. The story
increasingly impressed itself upon me. I saw him conscious of great
capacities for the administration of peace, an inner conviction of far
less ability for war; with a vision of Great Britain happy and
prosperous beyond all past experience under his enlightened guidance,
of which already the plans had been revealed and proof been given, and
over against this the palpable reality of a current too powerful to be
resisted, sweeping her into a conflict, the end of which, amid such
unprecedented conditions, could not be foreseen. Also, despite all his
deficiencies for a war ministry, as I read and studied the general
features of the situation with which he had to deal, I became
convinced that the broad lines of his policy coincided with the
military necessities of the case, to an extent that he himself very
possibly did not realize. For as the Directory outlined Napoleon's
Continental System, so Pitt, unknowingly perhaps, pursued the methods,
as he definitely predicted the means--exhaustion--by which his
successors brought to a stop the mischievous energies of France under
the great emperor.

Thus, before I began to write, my leading ideas for the historical
treatment of the influence of sea power during the period 1793-1814
rested upon an approval of the main features of Pitt's war policy, and
sympathy with his personal position; upon a clear conviction of the
weight of the Continental System as a factor in the general situation,
and of its being a direct consequence from British maritime supremacy;
and upon a sufficiently comprehensive acquaintance with the operations
of the land warfare up to the Peace of Amiens. Having as yet written
only the two introductory chapters, and Howe's campaign being strictly
episodical, the work as an organic whole was still before me when the
summer of 1890 arrived. It was then thought probable that the College
would at once resume, an