The prospect now darkened round every quarter of the horizon. The power of Austria had given way; Spain and Holland were combined against our naval supremacy; Italy was lost; a French expedition threatened Ireland; there was a strong probability of the invasion of Portugal; and the junction of the French and Spanish fleets might endanger not merely the Tagus fleet, but expose the Channel fleet to an encounter with numbers so superior, as to leave the British shores open to invasion. The domestic difficulties, too, had their share. The necessity of suspending cash payments at the Bank had, if not thrown a damp upon the nation, at least given so formidable a ground for the fallacies and bitterness of the Opposition, as deeply to embarrass even the fortitude of the great minister. We can now see how slightly all these hazards eventually affected the real power of England; and we now feel how fully adequate the strength of this extraordinary and inexhaustible country was to resist all obstacles and turn the trial into triumph. But faction was busy, party predicted ruin, public men used every art to dispirit the nation and inflame the populace; and the result was, a state of public anxiety of which no former war had given the example.
It is incontestable that the list of the British navy at this period of the war exhibited some of the noblest specimens of English character--brave, intelligent, and indefatigable men, ready for any service, and equal for all; with all the intrepidity of heroes, possessing the highest science of their profession, and exhibiting at once that lion-heartedness, and that knowledge, which gave the British navy the command of the ocean. And yet, if we were to assign the highest place where all were high, we should probably assign it to Lord St Vincent as an admiral. Nelson certainly, as an executive officer, defies all competition; his three battles, Copenhagen, Aboukir, and Trafalgar, each of them a title to eminent distinction, place him as a conqueror at the head of all. But an admiral has other duties than those of the line of battle; and for a great naval administrator, first disciplining a fleet, then supplying it with all the means of victory, and finally leading it to victory--Lord St Vincent was perhaps the most complete example on record of all the combined qualities that make the British admiral. His profound tactics, his stern but salutary exactness of command, his incomparable judgment, and his cool and unhesitating intrepidity, form one of the very noblest models of high command. All those qualities were now to be called into full exertion.