different situation; but the wiseheads at home know everything.”  Now it means expense and suffering, and nothing to do beyond the powers of an average officer.  “Any other man can as well look about him as Nelson.”  “Sir Thomas Troubridge,” he complains, after enumerating his grievances, “had the nonsense to say, now I was a Commander-in-Chief I must be pleased.  Does he take me for a greater fool than I am?” It was indeed shaving pretty close to insult to send out a man like Nelson as second, when great work was in hand, and then, after he had done all his superior had permitted, and there was nothing left to do, to tell him that he was indispensable; but to be congratulated upon the fact by a Lord of the Admiralty, which Troubridge then was, was rather too much.  He could not refuse to accept the command, but he demanded his relief in terms which could not be disregarded.  His health, he said, made him unequal to the service.  For three weeks he could not leave his cabin.  “The keen air of the North kills me.”  “I did not come to the Baltic with the design of dying a natural death.”

Parker had no sooner departed than Nelson made the signal for the fleet to weigh, and started at once for Revel.  He did not know whether or not the Russian ships were still there, and he felt that the change of sovereigns probably implied a radical change of policy; but he understood, also, that the part of a commander-in-chief was to see that the military situation was maintained, from day to day, as favorable as possible to his own country.  He anticipated, therefore, by his personal judgment, the instructions of the Cabinet, not to enter upon hostilities if certain conditions could be obtained, but to exact of the Russian Government, pending its decision, that the Revel ships should remain where they were.  “My object,” he said, writing the same day he took command, “was to get at Revel before the frost broke up at Cronstadt, that the twelve sail of the line might be destroyed.  I shall now go there as a friend, but the two fleets shall not form a junction, if not already accomplished, unless my orders permit it.”  For the same reason, he wrote to the Swedish admiral that he had no orders to abstain from hostilities if he met his fleet at sea.  He hoped, therefore, that he would see the wisdom of remaining in port.

His visit to Revel, consequently, was to wear the external appearance of a compliment to a sovereign whose friendly intentions were assumed.  To give it that color, he took with him only twelve ships-of-the-line, leaving the others, with the small vessels of distinctly hostile character, bombs, fireships, etc., anchored off Bornholm Island, a Danish possession.  The resolution to prevent a junction was contingent and concealed.  On the 12th the squadron arrived in the outer bay of Revel, and a complimentary letter, announcing the purpose of his coming, was sent to St. Petersburg.  The next day he paid an official