No
Briton ever enters that apartment without feeling the beef and ale of
his composition stirred to its depths, and finding himself changed into
a hero for the nonce, however stolid his brain, however tough his heart,
however unexcitable his ordinary mood. To confess the truth, I myself,
though belonging to another parish, have been deeply sensible to the
sublime recollections there aroused, acknowledging that Nelson expressed
his life in a kind of symbolic poetry which I had as much right to
understand as these burly islanders. Cool and critical observer as I
sought to be, I enjoyed their burst of honest indignation when a visitor
(not an American, I am glad to say) thrust his walking-stick almost into
Nelson's face, in one of the pictures, by way of pointing a remark; and
the by-standers immediately glowed like so many hot coals, and would
probably have consumed the offender in their wrath, had he not effected
his retreat. But the most sacred objects of all are two of Nelson's
coats, under separate glass cases. One is that which he wore at the
Battle of the Nile, and it is now sadly injured by moths, which will
quite destroy it in a few years, unless its guardians preserve it as we
do Washington's military suit, by occasionally baking it in an oven. The
other is the coat in which he received his death-wound at Trafalgar. On
its breast are sewed three or four stars and orders of knighthood, now
much dimmed by time and damp, but which glittered brightly enough on the
battle-day to draw the fatal aim of a French marksman.
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