Living always with the Hamiltons, the most copious stream of private correspondence was cut off; and being unemployed after April, 1802, his official letters are confined to subjects connected rather with the past than with the then present time.

Upon general naval questions he had, however, something to say.

A trip to Wales suggests a memorandum to the Prime Minister concerning the cultivation and preservation of oak timber in the Forest of Dean.

He submits to him also his views as to the disposition of Malta, in case the provision of the Treaty of Amiens, which re-established there the Order of the Knights under the guarantee of the six great Powers, should fail, owing to the refusal of Russia to join in the proposed guarantee.

At the time he wrote,--December, 1802,--the question was become burning, threatening the rupture of the existing peace between France and Great Britain; a result which, in fact, soon followed, and turned mainly upon this point.