wonders, yet work was never so strenuous and exploits so daring as
under the eyes of the great captain himself. He therefore paid
frequent visits to the north coast, surveying with critical eyes the
works at Boulogne, Calais, Dunkirk,

Ostend, and Antwerp. The last-named port engaged his special
attention. Its position at the head of the navigable estuary of the
Scheldt, exactly opposite the Thames, marked it out as the natural
rival of London; he now encouraged its commerce and ordered the
construction of a dockyard fitted to contain twenty-five battleships
and a proportionate number of frigates and sloops. Antwerp was to
become the great commercial and naval emporium of the North Sea. The
time seemed to favour the design; Hamburg and Bremen were blockaded,
and London for a space was menaced by the growing power of the First
Consul, who seemed destined to restore to the Flemish port the
prosperity which the savagery of Alva had swept away with such profit
to Elizabethan London. But grand as were Napoleon's enterprises at
Antwerp, they fell far short of his ulterior designs. He told Las
Cases at St. Helena that the dockyard and magazines were to have been
protected by a gigantic fortress built on the opposite side of the
River Scheldt, and that Antwerp was to have been "a loaded pistol held
at the head of England."

In both lands warlike ardour rose to the highest pitch. French towns
and Departments freely offered gifts of gunboats and battleships. And
in England public men vied with one another in their eagerness to
equip and maintain volunteer regiments. Wordsworth, who had formerly
sung the praises of the French Revolution, thus voiced the national
defiance:

"No parleying now! In Britain is one breath;
We all are with you now from shore to shore;
Ye men of Kent, 'tis victory or death."

In one respect England enjoyed a notable advantage. Having declared
war before Napoleon's plans were matured, she held the command of the
seas, even against the naval resources of France, Holland, and North
Italy. The first months of the war witnessed the surrender of St.
Lucia and Tobago to our fleets; and before the close of the year
Berbice, Demerara, Essequibo, together with < nearly the whole of the
French St. Domingo force, had capitulated to the Union Jack. Our naval
supremacy in the Channel now told with full effect. Frigates were ever
on the watch in the Straits to chase any French vessels that left
port. But