his transcendent actions must for ever stand pre-eminently conspicuous,
would far surpass, in genuine grandeur, perhaps, and certainly in
rational and philosophical contemplation, the loftiest and most
stupendous pillar or pyramid ever raised by human art and industry, for
little other purpose than to attract the gaze of profitless admiration,
with the vain attempt of mocking the powers of tempests and of time, by
which the proudest of these trophied monuments must necessarily be bowed
to subjection, and finally crumbled into dust. The solitary hermitage,
which shelters a single hoary head, is more interesting to the feeling
heart than the proudest display of barren pomp that neither rises over
the tomb of departed worth nor affords any living mortal a comfortable
habitation. The grand naval pillar, to commemorate the battle off the
Nile, for which a large sum was some years since subscribed, without any
previously decided plan, and which is said to be still undisposed of, if
employed in erecting a respectable edifice for the residence of those
brave veterans by whom that battle was fought, and such of their
successors, for ever, as should live to find such a residence desirable,
might be so constructed and endowed, with the money contributed, as to
afford a higher satisfaction to the subscribers; a superior, and
perpetually renewable, memorial of the event; and a far more gratifying
object of contemplation, even for such of the brave heroes who may never
need such a sanctuary; than the loftiest and most embellished obelisk
that human ingenuity can ever devise, or human industry execute. This is
a subject on which the author could with pleasure dilate; and the
promotion of which he would gladly assist, in every way, with all his
slender abilities: but, at present, it is an agreeable reverie, in which
he feels that he must no longer indulge.
He will, however, transcribe one of Lord Nelson's letters written on the
subject which led to this digression, as a satisfactory proof of his
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