"SIR,
"I am this day favoured with your letter, conveying to me the unanimous resolution of the Common Council of Liverpool, to honour me with their thanks, and also the freedom of their town. I beg you will assure those whom, from this moment, I am to call my brother freemen, that my future exertions shall never be wanting, to approve myself worthy of the high honour conferred upon me by the representative body of the second sea-port in the kingdom; and believe me, with the highest respect, your much obliged and obedient servant,
"Nelson."
"Thomas Leyland, Esq. Mayor of Liverpool."
The transactions of this busy day were of a nature which could not fail highly to gratify the feelings of our hero. He also received, either on this day or the following, a most kind, friendly, and highly satisfactory epistle, from the Earl of St. Vincent; the purport of which is sufficiently obvious from this answer, dated on board the Bellerophon, to which he had now shifted his flag.
"Bellerophon, Palermo, 1st Feb. 1799.