He desired that he might be buried by his parents, unless it should please the king to order otherwise.--“Kiss me, Hardy,” said he. Hardy knelt down and kissed his cheek: and Nelson said, “Now I am satisfied. Thank God, I have done my duty!” Hardy stood over him in silence for a moment or two, then knelt again, and kissed his forehead. “Who is that?” said Nelson; and being informed, he replied, “God bless you, Hardy.” And Hardy then left him--forever.
His articulation now became difficult; but he was distinctly heard to say, “Thank God, I have done my duty!” These words he had repeatedly pronounced; and they were the last. He expired at thirty minutes after four,--three hours and a quarter after he had received his wound.
Once, amidst his sufferings, Nelson had expressed a wish that he were dead; but immediately the spirit subdued the pains of death, and he wished to live a little longer; doubtless that he might hear the completion of the victory which he had seen so gloriously begun. That consolation--that joy--that triumph, was afforded him. He lived to know that the victory was decisive; and the last guns which were fired at the flying enemy were heard a minute or two before he expired.
It is almost superfluous to add that all the honors which a grateful country could bestow were heaped upon the memory of Nelson. His brother was made an earl, with a grant of £6000 a year; £10,000 were voted to each of his sisters; and £100,000 for the purchase of an estate. A public funeral was decreed, and a public monument. Statues and monuments also were voted by most of our principal cities. The leaden coffin, in which he was brought home, was cut in pieces, which were distributed as relics of Saint Nelson,--so the gunner of the _Victory_ called them,--and when, at his interment, his flag was about to be lowered into the grave, the sailors who assisted at the ceremony, with one accord rent it in pieces, that each might preserve a fragment while he lived.
The death of Nelson was felt in England as something more than a public calamity: men started at the intelligence, and turned pale, as if they had heard of the loss of a dear friend. An object of our admiration and affection, of our pride and of our hopes, was suddenly taken from us; and it seemed as if we had never till then known how deeply we loved and reverenced him. What the country had lost in its great naval hero--the greatest of our own and of all former times--was scarcely taken into the account of grief. The people of England grieved that funeral ceremonies, public monuments, and posthumous rewards were all which they could now bestow upon him whom the king, the legislature, and the nation would alike have delighted to honor; whom every tongue would have blessed; whose presence in every village through which he might have passed would have wakened the church bells, have given schoolboys a holiday, have drawn children from their sports to gaze upon him, and “old men from the chimney corner,” to look upon Nelson ere they died. The victory of Trafalgar was celebrated, indeed, with the usual forms of rejoicing, but they were without joy; for such already was the glory of the British navy, through Nelson’s surpassing genius, that it scarcely seemed to receive any addition from the most signal victory that ever was achieved upon the seas; and the destruction of this mighty fleet, by which all the maritime schemes of France were totally frustrated, hardly appeared to add to our security or strength; for, while Nelson was living to watch the combined squadrons of the enemy, we felt ourselves as secure as now, when they were no longer in existence.