military, was as formidable as ever. He had as usual petty quarrels to compose among the allied Powers, and wounded vanities to soothe, to animate the energies of the lagging, and to keep an eye on the movements of the false. The effort in which he was the least successful was the last mentioned but one; he was unable with all his efforts to collect a force equal to that of Luxembourg. He managed, however, to take the field in greater strength than he had mustered on some previous years, and as Louis had now again put himself, with the usual elaboration of gorgeous ceremony, at the head of his army, William promised himself the satisfaction of looking his lifelong enemy once more in the face upon a battlefield. Louis, however, whether from personal cowardice or from having really contracted under the influence of perpetual adulation a sort of religious reverence for his own life, had none of William's military ardour. He liked directing sieges, but had no taste for commanding in pitched battles. In other words, he preferred those operations of war in which the most adventurous of generals must necessarily remain in the rear to those in which the most cautious of generals may find himself imperatively called upon to go to the front. He had hoped that the more agreeable form of warfare would be provided for him, and that he would have an opportunity of taking Liege or Brussels as he had taken Ghent. When, however, he found William posted in his path with a considerable if numerically inferior army, his martial ardour underwent a rapid reduction of temperature, and he at once signified his intention of returning to Versailles. The disappointment of Luxembourg, who had assured him of certain victory over William, was aggravated by the fact that the King insisted on detaching Boufflers with a portion of the army of the Netherlands to reinforce the troops in the Palatinate; which movement having been effected, he went home to Madame de Maintenon.