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NEL the president of Nevis. The marriage took place on the 11th March, 1787, Prince William Henry giving away the bride. Among Nelson's achievements on the West India station was his denunciation of frauds practised by contractors and prize-agents. He was not immediately successful. The accused even contrived at the time to prejudice the admiralty against their accuser, so that when the Boreas arrived in England in June, with Nelson in indifferent health, it was kept at the Nore till the end of November, in the dignified employment of a slop and receiving ship. Such was Nelson's indignation at this treatment that when the Boreas was paid off, he announced his intention of resigning his commission and leaving the service for ever. Lord Howe, then first lord of the admiralty, heard of his intention, sent for him, was satisfied by his explanations, and presented him to the king at the next levee. Nelson was so graciously received by his sovereign as to forget or condone his wrongs. His attacks on the West India peculators were now renewed in person at head-quarters and with complete though unrewarded success. The repose which he was enjoying with his wife at his father's parsonage was disturbed by threats of new prosecutions arising out of the old seizure of American ships. With his usual decision he wrote to the treasury that if he did not receive assurances of government support by return of post, he should take refuge in France, and he made preparations for departure. The assurances which he received were satisfactory. War with France arose, and on the 30th of January, 1793, through the influence of the duke of Clarence and Lord Hood, Nelson was appointed to the command of the Agamemnon, of 64 guns, and might have felt that at last was arriving the time for the fulfilment of his youthful vision of heroic destination. In the Agamemnon he joined the naval force sent under Lord Hood to the Mediterranean, but had no share in the operations at Toulon, in which Napoleon first distinguished himself, being sent with despatches to Sir William Hamilton, our envoy at the court of Naples, then and there forming that acquaintance with Lady Hamilton (see ) which unhappily ripened into a passionate attachment. Not long afterwards Nelson found himself for the first time in command of a squadron, though a small one, with which he was detached to aid Paoli (q.v.) and the anti-French party in Corsica. After a series of active but subordinate operations, he, to his delight, was called on to aid Lord Hood in an attack upon the French in Bastia, which the English general disapproved of, and which Hood undertook on his own responsibility with the scantiest military aid. Before the attack, Nelson received information that the garrison of Bastia was much stronger than the English suspected, but he characteristically avoided imparting the intelligence, lest the siege should be given up. Of the preparations for the attack Nelson was the life and soul; the blue jackets dragging up guns under his orders to impossible heights. When Bastia had surrendered (19th May, 1794) he was sent to co-operate, again successfully, with Sir Charles Stewart, in reducing Calvi, in the attack on which a shot struck the ground near him, driving the sand and gravel into one of his eyes, of which the sight was lost. Lord Hood returned to England, and was succeeded by Admiral Hotham, during whose chase of the French Toulon fleet Nelson engaged with and captured (13th and 14th March, 1795) the Ca Ira, 84 guns, and Le Censeur, 74, after a gallant fight on both sides—the admiral, to Nelson's great dissatisfaction, refusing to follow up the success and continue the chase. He was sent next to blockade Genoa, with a squadron of eight frigates; and he superintended—to him a melancholy occupation—the British evacuation of Corsica, Sir John Jervis, better known as Earl St. Vincent, having meanwhile taken the command of the Mediterranean fleet. Commodore Nelson, as he now was, hoisted his broad pendant on board the Minerva frigate, and on the 19th December, 1796, took, after a gallant fight, a Spanish frigate, the Santa Sabina. On the 13th of February, 1797, he joined the fleet under Sir John Jervis, just in time to be present at the battle of St. Vincent, and was ordered to shift his pendant on board the Captain, 74. The battle began at daybreak of the 14th. It was the first engagement in which Nelson had an opportunity afforded him of displaying, on a scale worthy of them, some at least of his great naval qualities. He began by disregarding a particular signal, to obey which might have been fatal to success, and as a result of his disobedience he found his ship engaged with seven of the enemy's, among them the Santissima Trinidad, 136 guns, and the San Josef, and the Salvador del Mundo, both of them 112. After some fighting. Nelson was abreast of and close alongside the San Nicolas, 80 guns, with his own ship the Captain completely disabled. He at once gave orders to board, and himself leaped in through the upper quarter gallery window. When the English were in possession of the ship, a fire was opened upon them from the San Josef, which was lying on the other side of the San Nicholas. Nelson ordered the San Nicholas to be boarded from the San Josef, and himself led the way, exclaiming, "Westminster abbey or victory!" On the quarter-deck he received the swords of the captain and other officers, while the Spanish admiral was dying of his wounds below. With all the four ships which were taken in this victory Nelson was engaged; two of them he took himself, and it was his daring disregard of the signal that converted the action into a victory. Nelson had been appointed a rear-admiral before the news of the action reached England, and then he received the order of the bath, and became Sir Horatio Nelson. Hoisting his flag as rear-admiral of the blue on board the Theseus, he was employed in the command of the inner squadron at the blockade of Cadiz. He headed an expedition against Teneriffe, and on the night of the 24th April, 1797, he was landing in the face of the enemy's fire to aid in the attack, when stepping out of the boat he received a shot through the right elbow and fell. The attack failed, which grieved Nelson more than the loss of his right arm, which it was necessary to amputate. The wounded hero returned to England, where new honours awaited him. He received the freedom of the cities of London and Bristol, and a pension of £1000 a year. "The memorial," says Southey, "which as a matter of form he was called upon to present on this occasion, exhibited an extraordinary catalogue of services performed during the war. It stated that he had been in four actions with the fleets of the enemy, and in three actions with boats employed in cutting out of harbour, in destroying vessels, and in taking three towns; he had served on shore with the army four months, and commanded the batteries at the sieges of Bastia and Calvi; he had assisted at the capture of seven sail of the line, six frigates, four corvettes, and eleven privateers; taken and destroyed near fifty sail of merchant vessels, and actually been engaged against the enemy upwards of a hundred and twenty times; in which service he had lost his right eye and right arm, and been severely wounded and bruised in his body."

Early in 1798 Nelson hoisted his flag in the Vanguard, with orders to rejoin Earl St. Vincent, the new title bestowed on Jervis for the victory in which Nelson had a principal share. A great expedition was then fitting out by the French at Toulon, and Nelson, whose achievements were now beginning to be acknowledged, was despatched to watch it. Stress of weather drove him to Sardinia, where he was strongly reinforced. On the 22nd of June he heard that the French had left Malta after seizing it, and he divined that their course was for Egypt. Immediately he set sail for Alexandria, and had coasted the southern side of Candia, when not falling in with the enemy, he returned to Sicily. It was on this occasion that he obtained, through the influence of Lady Hamilton, as mentioned in our memoir of her, that permission to enter Syracuse, and refit, victual, and water, without which he could not have pursued the French, whom he had missed, and who were on their way to Egypt. On the 25th of July he sailed from Syracuse for the Morea. On the 1st of August he came in sight of Alexandria, and in the afternoon the enemy's fleet was visible. Nelson made his preparations for battle, and when his officers were going to their stations he said to them—"Before this time to-morrow I shall have gained a peerage or Westminster abbey." The French fleet, under the command of Admiral Brueys, was moored in Aboukir bay, in a compact line of battle, "the headmost vessel being as close as possible to a shoal on the N.W., and the rest of the fleet forming a kind of curve along the line of deep water, so as not to be turned by any means in the S.W." According to the same account, Southey's, "the advantage in numbers, both in ships, guns, and men, was in favour of the French. They had thirteen ships of the line and four frigates, carrying eleven hundred and ninety-six guns, and eleven thousand two hundred and thirty men. The English had the same number of ships of the line, and one fifty-gun ship, carrying ten hundred and twelve guns, and eight thousand and sixty-eight men. The English ships were all seventy-fours; the French had three eighty-gun ships, and one three decker of one hundred and twenty." "The moment,"