Page:Final French Struggles in India and on the Indian Seas.djvu/106

78 Had he but lived, would he have been too old to command the fleet which fought Lord Howe on the 1st June, 1794? Could he have occupied with advantage the place of Brueys and Villeneuve? These are questions which the French at least, who owned him and who glory in him, do ask, and which they have a right to ask. Nor will we — we English — who honour genius, and who recognise that genius in the man who, though a foreigner, was still the precursor of our own Nelson, grudge them the answer which their pride and their patriotism alike dictate.

Meanwhile peace between the European rivals reigned again in Southern India. By the interval of nine years which elapsed between the signature of the treaty of Versailles and the outbreak of the war of the Revolution the English profited to fix their domination on a basis so substantial as to be proof against further direct hostility on the part of their great rival. But the indirect efforts which were then attempted were coloured by a tinge of romance almost entirely wanting in the history I have just recorded.