Having said this, the hero turned his face
towards Burke, on whose arm he had been
supported, and expired without a groan at thirty
minutes after four, three hours and a quarter
after he had been struck. Within a quarter of
an hour of his going below there were only two
Frenchmen left alive on the mizen-top of the
Redoutable. One of them was the Tyrolese who
killed Nelson. An old quartermaster recognised
his hat and white frock.

This quartermaster and two midshipmen, Mr.
Collingwood and Mr. Pollard, were the only
persons left in the Victory's poop; the two
midshipmen kept firing at the top, and he
supplied them with cartridges. One of the Frenchmen
attempting to make his escape down the
rigging, was shot by Mr. Pollard, and fell on
the poop. But the old quartermaster, as he
cried out, "That's he—that's he," and pointed
at the other, who was coming forward to fire
again, received a shot in his mouth, and fell
dead. Both the midshipmen then fired at
the same time, and the fellow dropped in the
top. When they took possession of the prize,
they went into the mizen-top, and found him
dead; with one ball through his head, and
another through his breast.

The last guns fired on the cowed and flying
enemy were heard a minute or two before
Nelson's great heart ceased to beat. They were
his triumphant knell. Rear-Admiral Dumanoir,
with four of the van, fired, as they passed,
into the Victory, the Royal Sovereign, and the
captured Spanish vessels, to the indignation
of their vanquished allies. But the fugitives
were unlucky, for Sir Richard Strachan bagged
them all soon after.

Our loss in this great and crowning battle
was one thousand five hundred and eighty-seven
men. Twenty of the enemy's ships struck, but
only four were saved. A strong gale coming on
that night from the south-west, Collingwood
found it impossible to anchor. The Spanish
vice-admiral, Aliva, died of his wounds.Villeneuve
was sent back to France, and dreading a
court-martial, destroyed himself on the road to
Paris.

At home the greatness of the victory seemed
to be forgotten in the greatness of the nation's
sorrow. England now felt what a hero she had
bred. Not the poorest man in the country but
felt the loss as if his father had died. The national
gratitude surged over. Nelson's brother was
made an earl, with a grant of six thousand pounds
a year; ten thousand pounds were voted to
each of his sisters; and one hundred thousand
pounds granted for the purchase of an estate.
A public funeral was decreed, and a public
monument in St. Paul's. The leaden coffin, in
which he was brought home, was cut into relics..
As he was lowered into the vault of St. Paul's
Cathedral, the sailors, as if by agreement, tore
the flag that covered his coffin into strips, to
keep till their dying day, and then leave their
children as heirlooms and incitements to glory.

Nor was brave Collingwood forgotten. He
was made a baron, and had a pension of two
thousand pounds for his life, with an annuity
after his death of one thousand pounds to his
wife, and five hundred pounds to his two
daughters. Two days after the battle of
Austerlitz the dead body of Nelson arrived off
Portsmouth. Austerlitz was a great blow, but
it did not make up for Trafalgar. The body of
Nelson lay in state at Greenwich on January 5,
on the 8th it was taken to the Admiralty,
and on the 9th was interred in St. Paul's, the
Prince of Wales being present, and ten thousand
soldiers of the line. Thirty-four years before,
a thin sickly boy, the son of a Norfolk
clergyman, had joined his uncle's ship the Raisonable
of sixty-four guns; this same boy, afterwards
the bulwark of England, was now laid in
his sumptuous grave, and. upon his grave fell
the tears of a grateful and sorrow-stricken
nation. Our hearts of oak may turn to iron,
our rough sailors to dexterous engineers, but
will the memory of Nelson ever be forgotten
while the blue sea girdles the chalk ramparts of
Old England?

OYSTER NURSERIES.

WHAT has happened to all the oysters?
Who sends us now that welcome barrel of rich
sea "marrows" at Christmas-time? The oyster-
devouring population has indeed increased, but
an enormous addition to the price has lessened
popular consumption. Some physiologist, with a
wise shake of the head, tells us that "the oyster-
pest has done it." An influenza, perhaps,
infected the silvery spats, and wrested from the
floating globules their filmy lives. A sort of
shell-measles was suggested, and for a year or
two people paid, though with a growl or two,
as much for half a dozen oysters as for two
dozen in better times. At last the general
conviction seems to be that the oyster dearth is the
result of an exceedingly rapid consumption.
Still, essays are occasionally written to prove that
that abominable dog-fish—mouching congers,
crabs, and even whelks—had acquired quite a
human appetite for oysters, and swallowed down
the young spats in myriads. One dreadful
gourmand has been specially stigmatised. The
cruel dog-whelk, or "Piercer," is branded as
the greatest destroyer of myriads. He ought
to be good eating himself, he is so tasty in his
own food. The piercers swarm up like locusts in
the spring, and are wondrously prolific. They
are regularly hatched from nests; each nest
contains about eight hundred eggs, and every egg
has forty infant demons softly nestled in tiny cists.
These spring quickly to maturity, and set to work
at boring. With an organ wonderfully adapted
for the purpose, they drill a hole in the shell of
the young oysters, and suck out their luscious
lives. A legion of crabs follows in the wake of
the whelk, and these prick out and clear away the
remnants of the murdered bi-valves. At
Lahillon, near the ?le des Oiseaux, there are four
men who live in a boat which floats over the
famous breeding-beds below. The duty of these
four men is to watch the line of march taken by
the army of piercers. As the boat sleeps in its