at Chirton, the ancient possession of his ancestors, which had been
left to him by my uncle, and in the enjoyment of a large fortune,
which he had gained during his professional career! What a contrast
did the reverse of the picture show! A lingering disease, a certain
death. He repeatedly represented the state of his health to the
Admiralty, but in vain; his country demanded his services; he gave her
his life; and without even the consolation of thinking that the
sacrifice he was making would be appreciated. "If Lord Mulgrave knew
me," said he in one of his letters to my father, "he would know that I
did not complain without sufficient cause."


It was thus that Collingwood came home--that the long exile ended and the
tired frame attained to rest. On May 11th, he was laid by the side of
Nelson in St Paul's, and the comrades of Trafalgar were re-united in a
last repose. The ceremony on this occasion exhibited none of the pomp and
circumstance which attended the obsequies of the hero of Trafalgar. In
harmony with the wishes and the character of the dead man, so simple was
it that the papers emphasise in surprise that "not even the choir service
is to be sung on the occasion." And this, possibly, constitutes the sole
particular in which England endeavoured to fulfil any desire of the man
who had laid down his life in her service. His earnest request that the
peerage which had been bestowed upon him might descend to his daughter,
his pathetic representation that but for the unremitting nature of that
service he would presumably have had a son to succeed him, were callously
ignored. There were obvious reasons why Nelson's dying bequest to the
nation of the woman he had loved remained unregarded, there was none that
that of Collingwood should not have been granted and his barren honours
thus made sweet to him. But his generation mourned him with idle tears,
and succeeding generations have, possibly, done him scanty justice. Yet