Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Napoleon when Villeneuve, hunted unceasingly from east to west and back again from west to east by Nelson, foiled even by Calder, and intimidated by the matchless tenacity of Cornwallis, had lost heart and turned southward to Cadiz, instead of keeping the sea and putting his fate to the touch. In that tremendous drama, the greatest ever acted on the seas, Nelson was assuredly the first and the greatest of the actors, but not the only occupant of the stage. In truth, his transcendent personality distorts in some measure the proper perspective of history, for neither was Trafalgar the real crisis of the conflict nor was Nelson the sole agent by whom its issue was determined. " I had their huzzas before, I have their hearts now," he said to Hardy as he quitted the shore of England for the last time. It was Nelson, the great incomparable warrior, the victor of the Nile and Copenhagen, that attracted their huzzas ; it was Nelson, the man with that large, loving, eager, wistful, and infinitely lovable soul of his, that even before Trafalgar had found an abiding-place in his countrymen's hearts. The fame of the warrior is fleeting; it remains a tradition, it may be, but not an active memory. "The tumult and the shouting dies" in time. But the love of men is not so fleeting. The rare souls that inspire it possess a passport to immortality far more durable than any that their greatest deeds can confer. In the case of Nelson, as in that of Wolfe, this love was consecrated and confirmed for ever by the death of the hero in the hour of victory. No man was ever more blessed in the opportunity of his death than Nelson was. There were no more battles for him to fight for his country. The battle of his own guilty love must have been decided in the end against him. If Emma Hamilton was not altoget...