Guard carefully against letting discontent appear in you.

It will be sorrow to your friends, a triumph to your competitors, and cannot be productive of any good.

Conduct yourself so as to deserve the best that can come to you, and the consciousness of your own proper behaviour will keep you in spirits if it should not come.

Let it be your ambition to be foremost in all duty.

Do not be a nice observer of turns, but ever present yourself ready for everything, and, unless your officers are very inattentive men, they will not allow others to impose more duty on you than they should." This devotion to duty is said to be peculiar to the English nation; and it has certainly more or less characterised our greatest public men.
Probably no commander of any other nation ever went into action with such a signal flying as Nelson at Trafalgar--not "Glory," or "Victory," or "Honour," or "Country"-- but simply "Duty!" How few are the nations willing to rally to such a battle-cry! Shortly after the wreck of the BIRKENHEAD off the coast of Africa, in which the officers and men went down firing a FEU-DE-JOIE after seeing the women and children safely embarked in the boats,--Robertson of Brighton, referring to the circumstance in one of his letters, said: "Yes! Goodness, Duty, Sacrifice,--these are the qualities that England honours.