222 NELSON der by a musket ball. " They have done for me at last, Hardy," said he, as he was raised up from the deck; "my backbone is shot through." He was carried below, and the surgeon examining his wound pronounced it to be mortal. He continually expressed the great- est anxiety as to the result of the battle. At length Capt. Hardy came down from the deck, and congratulated his dying commander on having gained a complete victory. He did not know how many had struck, but 14 or 15 at least had surrendered. " That's well," an- swered Nelson, " but I had bargained for 20." Anxious that the vessels taken should be saved from the possible danger of a storm, he added in a stronger voice : " Anchor, Hardy, anchor. Do you make the signal." The order was not obeyed, and in the gale that came up the fol- lowing night all but four of the prizes were destroyed or lost. Next to his'country, Lady Hamilton occupied his thoughts. " Take care of my dear Lady Hamilton, Hardy ; take care of poor Lady Hamilton." A few minutes be- fore he died, he turned to the chaplain, and said : " Doctor, I have not been a great sinner. Remember that I leave Lady Hamilton and my daughter Horatia as a legacy to my country." He then frequently repeated : " Thank God, I have done my duty." These were the last words he uttered, and at 4J P. M. he expired without a groan. The body was placed in a coffin made out of the mast of the L'Orient. This singular gift had been presented him by Capt. Hallowell, and before Nelson left Lon- don for the last time he had called at his up- holsterer's and told him to get it ready, for he should soon require it. He was buried in St. Paul's cathedral, Jan. 8, 1806, and his funeral, conducted at the public expense, was the most solemn and magnificent spectacle which had ever been witnessed in England. Honors were heaped upon his family. His brother, the Rev. "William Nelson, D. D., was created Earl Nelson of Trafalgar and Merton, with an annual grant of 6,000, and permission to inherit the duke- dom of Bronte ; 10,000 were voted to each of his two sisters, besides 100,000 for the purchase of an estate. A few hours before his death he appended a codicil to his will, in which he left Lady Hamilton as a legacy to his king and country, and his " adopted daughter, Horatia Nelson Thompson," to the beneficence of his country. " These," continues the docu- ment, "are the only favors I ask of my king and country at this moment, when I am going to fight their battle." This codicil his broth- er concealed until the parliamentary grant to himself had been completed ; and to it and his dying request in behalf of the same persons the British people paid no attention. Nelson is the greatest name in the naval annals of Eng- land. " He annihilated the French navy," says Alison, "by fearlessly following up the new system of tactics, plunging headlong into the enemy's fleet, and doubling upon a part of their line, in the same manner as Napoleon practised in battles on land." As he left no legitimate children, his viscounty became extinct, but the barony devolved by limitation upon his broth- er William, whose grandnephew Horatio, Earl and Baron Nelson and Viscount Merton, is the present representative of the family. Horatia Nelson was the admiral's natural daughter, Erobably by Lady Hamilton ; for it is a singu- ir fact that while he is universally considered her father, her maternity is doubted, and there are not wanting patriotic British critics who maintain that the attachment between Nelson and Lady Hamilton was purely Platonic. Ho- ratia was married to the Rev. Philip "Ward, an English clergyman. Among the biographies of Lord Nelson we may cite Clarke and MacAr- thur's " Life of Admiral Lord Nelson " (2 vols. 4to, 1809) ; Robert Southey's " Life of Nelson " (2d ed., 8vo, 1831); Pettigrew's "Memoirs of the Life of Vice Admiral Lord Viscount Nel- son " (2 vols. 8vo, 1849) ; and E. De Forgues, Histoire de Nelson, from official documents and Nelson's private correspondence (Paris, 1860). His letters to Lady Hamilton (2 vols. 8vo) were published in 1814, and the " Letters and Despatches of Lord Nelson," edited by Sir Harris Nicolas (7 vols. 8vo), in 1844-'6. NELSON, Samuel, an American jurist, born at Hebron, N. Y., Nov. 10, 1792, died at Coopers- town, Dec. 13, 1873. His father, a farmer, emigrated to the United States from the north of Ireland in the latter part of the 18th cen- tury. He graduated at Middlebury college, Vt., in 1813, studied law at Salem, N. Y., was admitted to the bar in 1817, and commenced practice at Cortland. In 1820 he was a presi- dential elector. From 1823 to 1831 he was circuit judge, after which he became associate justice, and in 1837 chief justice of the supreme court of the state of New York. In 1844 he was appointed associate justice of the United States supreme court. In 1846 he was a mem- ber of the state constitutional convention, and in 1871 of the joint high commission to set- tle the Alabama claims. In October, 1872, he was compelled by declining health to retire from the bench. He resided for more than 50 years at Cooperstown. NELSON, Thomas, an American statesman, born in York co., Va., Dec. 26, 1738, died there, Jan. 4, 1789. His father, William Nel- son, for many years president of the colonial council, sent him in his 14th year to Cambridge, England, where he was educated at Trinity college. In his 24th year he married, and set- tled at Yorktown, where he possessed a great estate and led a life of leisure. He became a decided partisan of the American cause, and rendered efficient service in the house of bur- gesses. He was a member of the provincial con- ventions of 1774 and 1775, and in that which met in May, 1776, to frame a constitution for Virginia, in which he offered the resolution in- structing the Virginia delegates in congress to propose a declaration of independence. Hav- ing been elected a delegate to congress, he
