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their renown to its practice. Among these was Lord Erskine; and he enjoyed the friendship of Mr. Fox and Lord Grey. But he made a great difference between the eloquence of the senate and the bar-a difference not perhaps marked by his accustomed sagacity and liberal views, yet sufficiently easy to account for. Parliamentary speaking he regarded as mere talk." He saw the noblest exertions of the orator, "and also the speeches of longest duration (a circumstance much fitted to rouse his impatience), and, as he phrased it, in wind. The decision came, which he reckoned the result of the battle, and he could trace no connexion between that and the preceding debate. Hence he deemed the whole "nonsense," a farce," "a child's play;" without reflecting that in the long run discussion produces, directly or indirectly, its effect, as he probably would have perceived had he viewed the scene from what he would call "a safe distance;"—that is, so far off as not to have his early hours interfered with, and his patience assailed by length of speech. The trial of causes he viewed with other eyes. That he considered as business-as acting and not talking; and, having the highest admiration for the skill of an advocate, there was no society in which he delighted so much as that of the bar. To hear his acute and even profound remarks upon the conduct of a cause, and the play of adverse counsel, every point of which, to the most minute and technical, he clearly comprehended and highly relished, was one of the things that impressed the listener with the greatest opinion of his extraordinary capacity. He viewed it as a fine operation of attack and defence; and he often said that there was nothing which he ever more regretted than not having been able to attend the proceedings in the Queen's case.

In recounting the triumphs of his military genius, I have not adverted to the extraordinary promptitude and powers of combination which he displayed, when

he equipped the finest expedition that ever was detached from a fleet, and sent it under Nelson up the Mediterranean. That illustrious hero always acknowledged, with the most affectionate gratitude, how much his victory of the Nile was owing to this grand operation of his chief, for whom he felt and ever testified the most profound veneration. Nor was anything ever more disgustful to his truly noble and generous nature, than the attempts of that tribe, the worst kind of enemies, (pessimum inimicorum genus, laudatores,)— the mean parasites who would pay their court to himself by overrating his services at St. Vincent in 1797, and ascribing to him the glory of that memorable day. Their affection became thus grounded upon thorough knowledge of each other's merits, and the admiration which these commanded was mutual; nor did the survivor once omit an opportunity of testifying the love he bore his illustrious friend, and his grief for the blow which took him from his country. On board his flag-ship, on all those great occasions when he entertained his numerous followers, Nelson's Dirge was solemnly performed while they yet surrounded the table; and it was not difficult to perceive, as I well remember, that the great warrior's usual contempt for displays of feeling here forsook him, and yielded to the impulse of nature and of friendship.

So little effect on exalted spirits have the grovelling arts of little souls! He knew all the while, how attempts had been made by Lord Nelson's flatterers to set him up as the true hero of the Fourteenth of February; but never for an instant did those feelings towards Nelson cross his mind, by which inferior natures would have been swayed. In spite of all such invidious arts, he magnanimously sent him to Aboukir; and, by unparalleled exertions, which Jervis alone could make, armed him with the means of eclipsing his own fame. The mind of the historian, weary with recounting the deeds of human baseness, and mortified with

contemplating the frailties of illustrious men, gathers a soothing refreshment from such scenes as these; where kindred genius, exciting only mutual admiration and honest rivalry, gives birth to no feeling of jealousy or envy, and the character which stamps real greatness is found in the genuine value and native splendour of the mass, as well as in the outward beauty of the die; the highest talents sustained by the purest virtue; the capacity of the statesman, and the vafour of the hero, outshone by the magnanimous heart, which beats only to the measures of generosity and of justice.

Nor let it be deemed any abatement of this praise, if the undeniable truth be stated, that no two men in the same professional career, and both of consummate excellence, ever offered more points of marked diversity in all the particulars which distinguish character and signalize the kinds of human genius. Alike in courage, except that the valour of the one was more buoyant, more constitutional-of the other, more the steady result of reflection, and the produce of many great qualities combined, than the mere mode of temperament;-alike without any difference whatever in that far higher quality, moral courage, and political, which is the highest pitch of it; alike in perfect nautical skill, the result of talents matured by ample experience, and of the sound judgment which never disdains the most trifling details, but holds nothing trivial connected with an important subject;-yet, even in their professional abilities, these great captains differed for the more stern mind of the one made him a severe disciplinarian, while the amiable nature of the other seduced him into an habitual relaxation of rules whose rigorous enforcement galled, if it did not wound, his kindlier feelings. Not that either Jervis stooped to the fopperies by which some little minds render the service entrusted to their hands as ridiculous as themselves; or that Nelson failed to exact strict compliance

with rules, wherever their infraction would be manifestly hurtful: but the habits of the two men upon ordinary occasions were opposite, and might be plainly seen by an inspection of the ships that bore their flags. So, too, Nelson was unequal to the far-seeing preparation and unshaken stedfastness of purpose required to sustain a long-continued operation; and would, therefore, ill have borne the monotony of a blockade, such as that which kept Collingwood for years on shipboard, or that which Jervis maintained off Brest with the Channel fleet. It is also undeniable, that, although nothing could exceed the beauty and perfect fitness of his dispositions for action when the whole operations were reduced to their ultimate point, yet he could not, like Jervis, have formed the plan of a naval campaign; or combined all the operations over a large range of coast and sea, making each part support the other, while all conduced to the main purpose. Thus, too, it may be doubted if St. Vincent would have displayed that sudden, almost intuitive promptitude of decision, the result more of an ardent soul than a penetrating sagacity, which led Nelson to his marvellous course from the old world to the new in 1805; when he in an instant discovered that the French fleet had sailed to the West Indies, and having crossed the Atlantic in chase of them, again discovered that they had returned; and appeared in Europe almost as soon as the enemy arrived, whom the mere terror of his tremendous name had driven before him from hemisphere to hemisphere. That the movements of his illustrious master would have been as rapid, and his decision as prompt, had the conjecture impressed itself on his mind with the same force, none can doubt; and it may be further admitted, that such a peremptory will as the latter showed-such a fixed resolution to be obeyed, such an obdurate, inflexible, unteachable ignorance of the word "impossible," when any preparation was to be made,—formed no part of Nelson's character; although

he showed his master's profound and crass ignorance of that word—the mother tongue of little souls-when any mighty feat was to be done, such as souls like these cannot rise to comprehend. He who fought the great fight with the Foudroyant, would have engaged his Spanish first-rates, had his flag off St. Vincent floated like Nelson's over a seventy-four; but Nelson could not have put to sea in time for intercepting the Spanish fleet, any more than he could have cured or quelled the mutinous contagion which infected and distracted Jervis's crews on the eve of the action.

If, even in a military view, these great warriors thus differed, in all other respects they are rather to he contrasted than compared. While it was hard to tell whether Jervis excelled most in or out of his profession, Nelson was nothing on shore-nay, had weaknesses, which made the sea air as necessary, if not to his mental condition, at least to his renown, as it is to the bodily health of some invalids. The great mind of the one was the natural ally of pride; the simpler nature of the other became an easy prey to vanity. Nelson felt so acutely the delight of being loved and admired by all-for to all he was kind himself,-that he could not either indulge in it with moderation, or conceal it from the world. Severely great, retiring within himself, occupied with his own reflections, Jervis disregarded the opinion of those whom he felt destined to command; and only descended to gain men's favour that he might avail himself of their co-operation, which he swiftly converted into service. While Nelson thought aloud, Jervis's words were little apt to betray the feelings that ruled, or the meditations that occupied his mind. The one was great only in action; the other combined in a rare, perhaps an unexampled manner, all the noble qualities which make council vigorous and comprehensive, with those which render execution prompt and sure. In the different temper of the men's minds, you could easily tell that the one would be

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