"Our friend Troubridge is to be a Lord of the Admiralty, and I have a sharp eye, and almost think I see it.

No, poor fellow, I hope I do him injustice; he cannot surely forget my kindness to him." But when the single eye has become double, suspicion thrives, and when tortured by his desire to return to Lady Hamilton, Nelson saw in every obstacle and every delay the secret hand of Troubridge.

"I believe it is all the plan of Troubridge," he wrote in one such instance, "but I have wrote both him and the Earl my mind." To St.Vincent, habit and professional admiration enabled him to submit, if grudgingly, and with constant complaints to his _confidante_; but Troubridge, though now one of the Board that issued his orders, was his inferior in grade, and he resented the imagined condition of being baffled in his wishes by a junior.

The latter, quick-tempered and rough of speech, but true as his sword, to use St.Vincent's simile, must have found himself put to it to uphold the respect due to his present position, without wronging the affection and reverence which he undoubtedly felt for his old comrade, and which in the past he had shown by the moral courage that even ventured to utter a remonstrance, against the infatuation that threatened to stain his professional honor.
Such straining of personal relations constantly accompanies accession to office; many are the friendships, if they can be called such, which cannot endure the experience that official action may not always be controlled by them.

If such is to be noted in Nelson, it is because he was no exception to the common rule, and it is sad that a man so great should not in this have been greater than he was.