d in order to be at hand I settled my family
in Newport, there addressing myself to my new lectures. Considering
the mass of detail through which my hearers must be carried, I thought
advisable to begin with an outline statement of the general political
and military conditions, and of their sequences; a rudimentary figure,
a skeleton, the nakedness of which should render easy to understand
the mutual bearings of the several parts, and their articulations. So
most surely could the relation of sea power to the other members be
seen, and its influence upon them and upon the ultimate issue be
appreciated. Before I began, I remember explaining to a brother
officer my conception of the Continental System as the culmination of
the maritime struggle, which in a narrowly military sense had ended
with Trafalgar. The light thus cast would illuminate afterwards each
of the several sections of the history, treated circumstantially in
order of time. In short, I here applied to the whole the method of my
diagram for Trafalgar, and not of that for June 1st. The result was
the chapter last in the work, as it now stands, but the first to be
composed.

A few months before book publication this chapter appeared in the
_Quarterly Review_, under the title "Pitt's War Policy," chosen by me
to express my recognition that the grand policy was his; that in it he
was real as well as titular premier; and that in my judgment, despite
the numerous errors of detail which demonstrated his limited military
understanding, the economical comprehension of the statesman had
developed a political strategy which vindicated his greatness in war
as in peace. The article ended, as the chapter then did, with the
well-known quotation, particularly apt to my appreciation, "The Pilot
had weathered the storm." The few subsequent pages were added later.
By an odd coincidence, just as I had offered the paper to the
_Quarterly_, one under the same title, "by a Foxite," came out in
another magazine. Somewhat discomposed, I hurried to look this up; but
found, as from the _nom de plume_ might be presumed, that it did not
take my line of argument, but rather, as I recall, that of Pitt's
opponents, which Macaulay has developed with his accustomed
brilliancy, although to my mind with profound misconception and
superficial criticism. Fox's speeches had made upon me the impression
of the mere objector. Indeed, I felt this so strongly that I had
written of him as "the great, b