And one from England came.
“The British Neptune, as of yore,
Proved master of the day;
The Spanish Neptune is no more,[F]
The French one ran away.”
Lord Nelson’s Death and Triumph.
From the Sheffield Paper, 1805.
“Intelligence of a most glorious event, accompanied with tidings of an awful calamity (like the angels of mercy and affliction travelling together), has arrived on our shores, and awakened the public mind from the agony of despondence to a tumult of mingled emotions, sorrow and joy, mourning and triumph.
“On the 21st of October, 1805, while the cowardly and incapable Austrian, General Mack, was surrendering himself and army into the hands of Bonaparte, the noble and lamented Lord Nelson, once more, and for the last time, fought and conquered the united foes of his country; but he fell in the meridian of victory, and in one moment became immortal in both worlds.
“His career of services had been long; but it was only in the last war that he burst upon the eye of the public as a luminary of the first magnitude. At the battle of Aboukir, he rose like the sun in the east, and like the sun too, after a summer’s day of glory, he set in the west, at the battle of Trafalgar, leaving the ocean in a blaze as he went down,[G] and in darkness when he descended.
“In ages to come, when the stranger who visits our island shall enquire for the monument of Nelson, the answer will be, ‘Behold his country which he has saved.’”