At an early age Alfonso VI. of Portugal had the misfortune to have his limbs and his reason partially paralysed by fever--a circumstance which must account for his wicked and vicious life in after years. On any other ground it is impossible to excuse his conduct, which was infamous and contemptible. But some of his freaks were so outrageous as to be attributable only to insanity, and it is surprising that they should have been tolerated for any length of time. What would be said of a monarch at the present day who, with a set of ruffianly companions, roamed the streets at night, “assaulted passengers, fired into the coaches of the nobles, and routed religious processions at the point of the sword.” We nowadays can scarcely realise a responsible ruler attending midnight orgies of the most disreputable and repulsive kind, and afterwards returning to his palace with flaunting females of the most dissolute and repulsive character. On one occasion, however, in one of his mad freaks he encountered two passengers, and drawing his sword attacked them; but they drew in return, and, after giving his Majesty far more than he bargained for, they left him to be picked up by his followers, who carried him home to bed. A humiliation of this kind was lost on a monarch who was too depraved to have any feeling of self-respect; for, when he was summoned to the bedside of his dying mother, he tarried so long on the way to amuse himself, that when he arrived she had lost the power of sight and speech. Despite his natural gifts, which were great, there can be no doubt that the texture of Don Sebastian’s mind was inwoven with the threads of that hereditary insanity which broke out so tragically in his cousin, Don Carlos. One of his eccentric freaks was to have the body of John II. lifted from its quiet resting-place in the Abbey of Batalha, where it had lain three-quarters of a century; and which, being found entire and uncorrupted, was placed erect on its feet, clad in kingly robes, and was armed with the rusty sword it had once wielded. Whereupon the Duke of Aveiro was commanded as a token of homage to kiss the withered hand of the corpse, and Sebastian, exclaiming, “Behold the best officer of our kingly office!” turned away to pursue his sepulchral visitations elsewhere.