This the navy of the Twenty Years’ War knew well how to do, and never
better than when Lord Nelson had breathed into its soul his own passion
of honour and fame. It was a fortunate navy. Its victories were no mere
smashing of helpless ships and massacres of cowed men. It was spared
that cruel favour, for which no brave heart had ever prayed. It was
fortunate in its adversaries. I say adversaries, for on recalling such
proud memories we should avoid the word “enemies,” whose hostile sound
perpetuates the antagonisms and strife of nations, so irremediable
perhaps, so fateful—and also so vain. War is one of the gifts of life;
but, alas! no war appears so very necessary when time has laid its
soothing hand upon the passionate misunderstandings and the passionate
desires of great peoples. “Le temps,” as a distinguished Frenchman has
said, “est un galant homme.” He fosters the spirit of concord and
justice, in whose work there is as much glory to be reaped as in the
deeds of arms.
One of them disorganized by revolutionary changes, the other rusted in
the neglect of a decayed monarchy, the two fleets opposed to us entered
the contest with odds against them from the first. By the merit of our
daring and our faithfulness, and the genius of a great leader, we have in
the course of the war augmented our advantage and kept it to the last.
But in the exulting illusion of irresistible might a long series of
military successes brings to a nation the less obvious aspect of such a
fortune may perchance be lost to view. The old navy in its last days
earned a fame that no belittling malevolence dare cavil at. And this
supreme favour they owe to their adversaries alone.
Deprived by an ill-starred fortune of that self-confidence which
strengthens the hands of an armed host, impaired in skill but not in
courage, it may safely be said that our adversaries managed yet to make a
better fight of it in 1797 than they did in 1793. Later still, the
resistance offered at the Nile was all, and more than all, that could be
demanded from seamen, who, unless blind or without understanding, must
have seen their doom sealed from the moment that the _Goliath_, bearing
up under the bows of the _Guerrier_, took up an inshore berth. The
combined fleets of 1805, just come out of port, and attended by nothing
but the disturbing memories of reverses, presented to our approach a
determined front, on which Captain Blackwood, in a knightly spirit,
congratulated his Admiral. By the exertions of their valour our
adversaries have but added a greater lustre to our arms. No friend could
have done more, for even in war, which severs for a time all the
sentiments of human fellowship, this subtle bond of association remains
between brave men—that the final testimony to the value of victory must
be received at the hands of the vanquished.
Those who from the heat of that battle sank together to their repose in
the cool depths of the ocean would not understand the watchwords of our
day, would gaze with amazed eyes at the engines of our strife. All
passes, all changes: the animosity of peoples, the handling of fleets,
the forms of ships; and even the sea itself seems to wear a different and
diminished aspect from the sea of Lord Nelson’s day. In this ceaseless
rush of shadows and shades, that, like the fantastic forms of clouds cast
darkly upon the waters on a windy day, fly past us to fall headlong below
the hard edge of an implacable horizon, we must turn to the national
spirit, which, superior in its force and continuity to good and evil
fortune, can alone give us the feeling of an enduring existence and of an
invincible power against the fates.
Like a subtle and mysterious elixir poured into the perishable clay of
successive generations, it grows in truth, splendour, and potency with
the march of ages. In its incorruptible flow all round the globe of the
earth it preserves from the decay and forgetfulness of death the
greatness of our great men, and amongst them the passionate and gentle
greatness of Nelson, the nature of whose genius was, on the faith of a
brave seaman and distinguished Admiral, such as to “Exalt the glory of
our nation.”