CHAPTER XVIII.
RELEASE FROM ACTIVE SERVICE DURING THE PEACE OF AMIENS .-- HOME LIFE AT MERTON .-- PUBLIC INCIDENTS.
OCTOBER, 1801--MAY, 1803.

AGE, 43-44.
During the brief interval between his return from the Baltic, July I,1801, and his taking command of the Squadron on a Particular Service, on the 27th of the same month, Nelson had made his home in England with the Hamiltons, to whose house in Piccadilly he went immediately upon his arrival in London.

Whatever doubt may have remained in his wife's mind, as to the finality of their parting in the previous January, or whatever trace of hesitation may then have existed in his own, had been definitively removed by letters during his absence.

To her he wrote on the 4th of March, immediately before the expedition sailed from Yarmouth: "Josiah[39] is to have another ship and to go abroad, if the Thalia cannot soon be got ready.

I have done _all_ for him, and he may again, as he has often done before, wish me to break my neck, and be abetted in it by his friends, who are likewise my enemies; but I have done my duty as an honest, generous man, and I neither want or wish for anybody to care what becomes of me, whether I return, or am left in the Baltic.