Nelson's feelings were never wounded so deeply as now.

"I had thought," said he, writing in the first flow and freshness of indignation; "Fancied--but nay; it must have been a dream, an idle dream; yet I confess it, I DID fancy that I had done my country service; and thus they use me! And under what circumstances, and with what pointed aggravation?
Yet, if I know my own thoughts, it is not for myself, or on my own account chiefly, that I feel the sting and the disappointment.

No! it is for my brave officers: for my noble minded friends and comrades.

Such a gallant set of fellows! Such a band of brothers! My heart swells at the thought of them." War between Spain and England was now declared; and on the eighteenth of January, the Toulon fleet, having the Spaniards to co-operate with them, put to sea.

Nelson was at anchor off the coast of Sardinia, where the Madelena islands form one of the finest harbours in the world, when, at three in the afternoon of the nineteenth, the ACTIVE and SEAHORSE frigates brought this long-hoped-for intelligence.