UNDOU with the magnificent funeral of the Duke of Wellington, and one which will be freshly remembered when the gorgeous pageantry of the procession is forgotten, was, that the remains of the illustrious Field Marshal were borne in that imposing state to repose by the honouring and honoured dust of Nelson, of the great Admiral upon whose pale brow the crowning wreath of victory had been placed by the consecrating hand of Death. That final companionship is not confined to the tombs of those true heroes. They are inseparably associated in the national mind, in equality of admiration and esteem, not perhaps in equality of sympathy,-of affection. It could hardly be so. The heroic sailor did not live to bask in the sunshine of the fame he had achieved, to wear during a prolonged and triumphant life the honours which his great deeds had won; and for this reason, chiefly, it is that Nelson-Nelson dying at Trafalgar-the wasted, mutilated frame, the pallid death-face crowned and circled by the glory of his last immortal signal-excites in the breasts of his countrymen a warmer, a more throbbing sympathy than even the illustrious soldier whose achievements are written as with a sunbeam upon the brilliant historic page which records the liberation of Europe from the iron thraldom of a conqueror, whose apeish shadow in the present day suffices to darken the future, and chills the hopes of the well-wishers to continental freedom and true progress. The very childhood of Nelson appeals to the sympathetic admiration of his countrymen. The fifth son and sixth child of the Reverend Edmund Nelson, Rector of Burnham-Thorpe, Norfolk, and Catherine, his wife, who in all had a family of eleven children, eight of whom survived their mother, the young Horatio, a weakly boy, moreover, would have had but slight chance of writing his name upon the heroic annals of his country but for the compassionate generosity of his maternal uncle, Captain Suckling, R.N., who, upon the death of his sister, offered to provide for one of the boys she had left, as soon as he himself got appointed to a ship, and the selected youngster was ready to try his fortune at sea. Mrs. Nelson died in 1767, when Horatio, who was born on the 29th of September, 1758, was in his ninth year only; but he appears to have at once and instinctively appropriated Captain Suckling's offer, inasmuch that, upon reading in a county newspaper three years afterwards (1770) that Captain Suckling was appointed to the Raisonable, hastily fitting out at Chatham, for the purpose of assisting to bring Spain to reason in the matter of the Falkland Islands dispute, he instantly, and as a thing of course, asked his brother William, who was eighteen months his senior, to write immediately to their father, who happened to be at Bath at the time, in order that Captain Suckling might be informed without delay that his nephew Horatio, having reached the ripe maturity of twelve years, was ready to assist in doing battle against the Spaniard the moment he might be permitted to do so. The reply of Captain Suckling to the Reverend Mr. Nelson's intimation was a consenting, but not very complimentary one as regarded the future Admiral. "What," he wrote, "has poor Horatio done, who is so weak, that he above all the rest should be sent to rough it at sea? But let him come, and the first time we go into action a cannon-ball may knock off his head and provide for him at once." This last paragraph was no doubt intended to deter the slight boy, whose ague-weakened frame Captain Suckling could only have observed, from encountering the hazards and hardships of a sea life; though anything less likely to shake Horatio Nelson's resolution could hardly be imagined, and this the uncle-captain would have known had he been aware of the emulative, fearless, daring spirit of his feebly-framed nephew, ever prompting him to lead in all boyish enterprises that involved danger and promised distinction. The anecdotes which have come down to us relative to Nelson's schooldays very faintly embody the characteristics of hardihood combined with gentleness, by which his boy-companions (amongst whom was Captain Manby, the inventor of the life-saving apparatus in cases of shipwreck) were universally and vividly impressed. They are, however, worth reproducing as indices, though slight ones, of the fire thereafter destined to blaze forth in the avenging lightnings of the Nile, the Baltic, Trafalgar. When a mere child, he is said to have stolen off bird'snesting in company with a cow-boy, and great was the alarm of the family, chiefly from knowing there were numerous gipsies in the neighbourhood. Hour after hour passed away in vain quest of the missing urchin at last, he was found quietly seated on the bank of a stream which he could not cross. "I wonder," exclaimed his angry grandmamma, the moment she saw him, "I wonder fear, if not hunger, did not drive you home." "Fear, grandmamma!" replied the child, "I never saw fear: who is he?" It is right to mention, as the fact is with much emphasis insisted upon by Nelson's biographers, as if it could add something to the Admiral's fame, that his grandmamma was the eldest sister of Sir Robert Walpole, of ministerial memory, and that the second Lord Walpole was Horatio's sponsor at the baptismal font. But, to resume the early current of a life which created its own nobility. The child's school to which he was first sent was at Downham, and kept by a man of the name of Noakes, in the market-place of which quiet village young Nelson might be seen, whenever opportunity offered, working away, in his little green coat, at the pump, till, by the help of his schoolfellows, a sufficient pond was made, upon which he delighted to launch paper-sail knife-cut ships, previously prepared for such experimental navigation. William Patman, a shoemaker of the place, has given us an anecdote illustrative of the compassionate kindliness of Nelson's disposition. The shoemaker had a pet-lamb, which was accustomed to pass familiarly in and out of his shop: Nelson had the misfortune to jam the animal between the door and the door-post, "and the little fellow's grief and lamentation," said Patman, "for the pain he had unwittingly inflicted, was excessive, and for a long time uncontrollable." When somewhat older, Horatio was sent with his brother William to a more considerable school at North Walsham. It was there the pear tree exploit occurred. There was, it appears, a fine bearing pear-tree in the garden belonging to the establishment, the fruit of which had, from time immemorial to the present race of scholars, been the boys' lawful perquisite. One fine day, however, just as the fruit was ripening, it was announced that the pears were for the future to be kept sacred to the Reverend Mr. Jones the master's use and enjoyment. This arbitrary appropriation of the common property naturally excited the fierce though suppressed indignation of the scholars; and, after much discussion upon the best mode of getting possession of the forbidden fruit, it was unanimously resolved that the only plan offering a chance of success was, for one of the boys to be let down into the tree in the night, from the common bed-room window, which chanced to be rightly situated for the purpose, and, his mission accomplished, of course quietly drawn up again with his full pear-sack. The scheme was an admirable one, only, as often happens with admirable schemes, an apparently insuperable difficulty, which nobody had thought of, presented itself at the very moment of execution. One after another, the entire council of juvenile plotters, after a nervous glance at the situation-that is, the outer darkness, the tree indistinctly visible far below, the dangling tied and twisted bed-sheets, of which the inner end was valiantly grasped by numerous volunteers for the task of letting anybody but themselves out of the window-declined the honour of the dangerous descent. After all had refused, Horatio Nelson, who had taken no previous interest in the matter, volunteered the venture, went out of the window with unhesitating alacrity, and slid safely down into the tree. The spoil was quickly secured, and the daring boy pulled, with considerable difficulty, safely up again with his booty. Nelson would have none of the pears, and said, as he jumped into bed again, "I only did it because you were all afraid to venture." The two Nelsons were still at this school, when a servant arrived, one cold and dark spring morning (1778), before either of them was up, with a summons for Horatio to join the Raisonable, off Chatham, forthwith. The else delighted boy's only grief was parting with his brother, but the tears of youth are quickly dried, and the young midshipman expectant accompanied his father to London in exuberant spirits. The Rev. Mr. Nelson, having so far convoyed his son to his destination, sent him on alone by the Chatham stage, by which he was in due time safely set down in that ancient port. But the poor little fellow-he was in his twelfth year only-could not get taken off to the ship: perhaps he had not been trusted with any money, or only after the fashion of Mrs. Primrose to her daughters, with a strict injunction not to spend it; and he was roaming about the quay, cold and disconsolate, when an officer who knew his uncle observed him, and having heard his story, gave him some refreshment and a boat-passage to the ship. Even there his position was hardly mended. Captain Suckling was not on board; nobody had heard that his nephew was expected to join the Raisonable, and "it was not," said Nelson, "till the second day, that somebody took compassion upon me!" Spain wisely settled the Falkland Islands controversy without waiting for the arbitrement of line-of-battle ships, and after remaining a few months only in the Raisonable, Nelson, in order to advance himself in the science of seamanship, entered on board an outward-bound merchant vessel, commanded by Mr. John Rathbone, who had formerly served as a petty officer under Captain Suckling, in the Dreadnought. Mr. Rathbone was a disappointed man, who had contracted a virulent prejudice against the king's naval service, with which he contrived so thoroughly to inoculate young Nelson, that the lad upon his return to England manifested an utter detestation of the royal navy; and a saying, popular at the time amongst seamen, "Aft the most honour, forward the better men," was often on his lips. The voyage had, at all events, greatly benefited him in one essential respect, having made him, according to his own and others' report, "a practical seaman "-sea-boy would be the fitter word; and certainly not the least marvellous achievement of his career of marvels must be considered his attainment of professional efficiency in so short a time, and at such an age. Captain Suckling received him on board the Triumph, of seventy-four guns, a guard-ship in the Medway, and gradually reconciled him to the service by allowing him to go in the cutter and deck-boat, from Chatham to the Tower of London, and down the Swin to the North Foreland, and thereby practise himself in taking soundings and other boatwork, the knowledge of which greatly availed him in after life. Nelson remained in the Triumph about two years, the first fourteen months as captain's servant, the remainder of the time as a rated midshipman. Utterly weary, at last, of the monotonous uneventful duties of a guard-ship, he prevailed upon his uncle to solicit Captain Lutwidge, of the Carcass, brig-of-war, to receive him as his coxswain, boys being forbidden by an Admiralty order to volunteer for service in the expedition to which the Carcass belonged, the destination of which was towards the North Pole, in the hope of realizing that ignus fatuus of navigation, a practical pas then sage from the Arctic to the Pacific Ocean. Captain Lutwidge acceded to his friend's request; the Racehorse and Carcass sailed, and by the beginning of July, 1773, were frozen in at about latitude 79° 56' and 9° 44' east longitude, amidst ice upwards of twelve feet in thickness. The efforts required to extricate the vessels, and the harassing and perilous duties incident thereto, brought young Nelson's hardihood, energy, and resource into conspicuous play: and upon one occasion, but for his prompt daring, when in command of one of the Carcass's boats-a great charge for such a youngster-in hastening to the rescue of the crew of one of the Racehorse boats, in imminent danger from the furious attack of a large number of enraged walruses, some twenty of the Racehorse's crew would infallibly have lost the number of their mess. One night, as he was pacing the deck, at about mid-watch, of the still frozen-up Carcass, a huge white bear, distinctly visible in the bright moonlight, trotted, a considerable distance off, past the ship. The temptation was irresistible; Nelson prevailed upon a young comrade to accompany him, and quietly arming themselves with muskets, they slipped over the side, and were off in eager chase of Master Bruin. Presently a thick fog came on, which completely hid the mad-cap adventurers from view, and Captain Lutwidge, upon being informed of what had happened, was not only angry, but seriously alarmed for the boy's safety. About half-past three o'clock the fog rose, and they were seen in actual conflict with the bear, which, tired apparently of the dodging chase it had so long endured, seemed disposed to fight it out, there and then. Captain Lutwidge immediately signalled the boys to return; Nelson's comrade obeyed, and called upon him to do the same; but orders to retire from danger were |