various improvements, many old coins, and other antiquities, have been occasionally dug up.  Though this place was familiarly denominated a farm, by our hero and his friends, it had been, for many years before, the respectable seat of Sir Richard Hotham.  The ground, however, was certainly very contracted on one side of the house, being there little more than sufficient to bound the moat by which it was unpleasantly surrounded.  Whatever could be effected, in such limits, was soon arranged; and, as the autumnal season’s advancement probably reminded them of the spoliage which must speedily be expected to ensue in the general verdure of the scene, innumerable evergreens were most judiciously planted throughout the grounds; including a modest portion of those laurels, beneath the shade of which the transcendent merits of the heroic possessor so abundantly entitled him to repose.  By pursuing this excellent management, the charming gardens of Merton, in their enlarged state, preserve a considerable degree of comfort and beauty throughout the rigours of the severest winter.

Lord Nelson heard, daily, the progress which was making at the farm, and it afforded him a pleasure of which he stood greatly in need.  His health was, at this time, very indifferent, and he suffered severely from the cold winds of the autumnal equinox.  Though, however, the preliminaries of peace were now signed, he could not obtain leave of absence from the Admiralty, to try the good effects of a little retirement at his new dwelling, till the 22d of October, and then only for ten days.  As if this were not sufficient, he was agitated by the estrangement of his father’s affections, in consequence of the recent separation from Lady Nelson; and pestered with anonymous threatening letters, in a way very similar to those supposed to have been written by Mr. Barnard to the great Duke of Marlborough.  Every means were tried, by the friends of his lordship, to detect the writer of these infamous incendiary epistles, but without the desired effect.  They, however, gave the hero himself very little anxiety:  he considered them, probably, as nefarious attacks on his purse, through the medium of his character, and treated every menace they contained with the most sovereign contempt.  Such, however, was our hero’s filial reverence of parental authority, that he could by no means regard his father’s censure as a matter of light importance, though he felt conscious of his own innocence and integrity.  This, indeed, was truly a source of sorrow; and he resolved fully to satisfy his venerable parent’s every scruple, and convince him how cruelly he had been wronged by false and scandalous reports.