The Sun.
London, England, 1853-03-04 00:00:00

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LONDON, FRIDAY, MARCH 4, 1853.

NELSON'S DAUGHTER.

" Westminster Abbey or Victory !" It '4 ras
the battle-cry of the noblest, the truest, Ihe
bravest of the hero-sons of England. It was Ihe
exclamation with which he signalised the might i est
of his many glorious achievements. It was v r ith
this ejaculation on his lips that he bore down . his
ship " The Captain" (74) on the 14th of Febru2ti 7,
1797, upon the Spanish squadron, under Adro u al
CORDOVA, and, by a memorable disobedience of
orders, won the great fight of St. Vincent—aft er
boarding the " San Josef" (112) and the " 3 tn
Nicholas" (74), and grappling with a still ma. re
formidable antagonist (136), the " Santissi is
Trinidada." It was with that sentiment in -b is
heart that he succeeded, on the Ist of Augu.s t,
1798, in utterly destroying the French flee t,
under Admiral BRITEYS2.II2 the wonderful actic n
of the Nile—an action fought at anchor, and .at
midnight, for which and other reasons it has bee n
regarded by our naval historians as in many ru
spects altogether unparalleled. It was with ti
same magnificent alternative burning in lx is
bosom, firing his valour, inciting lii is
genius, and exalting his enthusiasm, th a t
he effected on the 2d of April, 180 1 ,
that extraordinary conquest at Copenhagen, whit'3lt
was at once a triumph of courage and a triumph t
of diplomacy. It was animated by the same ar-
dent aspiration that he gained the crowning glory
of his career on the 21st of October, 1805, pur--
chasing the final victory of British arms upon the,
ocean off that fatal Cape of Trafalgar ; with the,
very name of which his memory has been ever.
since identified.
floßATio NELSON gave everything to his coun-
'LlT- He devoted himself from a child to the
cause of patriotism. He dedicated to its sacred. 1
interests all the energies of his impassioned tem-
perament. He offered up to the service of Eng-
land all the force of his genius all
the' ardour of I
his daring, every Personal comfort
He e,+y private
or merely selfish consideration.
sacrificed fori
her his scanty fortunes,
his health, h
His bodily Woismaidsme =c,
of
at last his very existence.
all this surely sufficient attestation. He lost anaarrem
having his right elbow perforated by a musket:
ball, at Teneriffe. He lost an eye, upon another
occasion, in a hand-to-hand encounter. Re had
his forehead, so to speak, scalped by a langrido.e
shot, during the carnage in the Bay of Aboukir.
Although merely forty-seven when he died, an
age very wonderful considering
0- all his astonishing
achievements—his frame was so battered and
•
maimed by hard usage, that life seems only to
have been sustained through all those shocks and
disfigurements by the innate vigour of his still
youthful constitution. Comparatively brief though
his existence was, beginning-on the 29th of Sep-
tember, 1758, and ending on-__the 21st of October,
1805, it nevertheless comprised more suffering
than is frequently endured by a score of octoge-
narians, besides being illustrated-during four-and-
thirty years of active service in the maritime pro-
fession, by deeds of valour sufficient to build up
a dozen heroic reputations. The service began at
thirteen on board the " Raisonnable," and ended
only with death, appropriately, it must always .be
felt,
t
on board the " VICTORY." And from first to
last ere was manifest the same zeal, and the
same there
dauntless self-sacrifice—the Admiral
i display
-
ing in a similar manner and wth a 1
pur-
pose, the noble qualities Which,
had oftier
been revealed
in the pilfered orchard by the schoolboy, and in
the bear-hunt in the arctic
regions by the mid-
shipman. We speak of these
familiar with the incidents in the
cagsreetro af race
this
great Sea, Captain. We address ourselves to a