rudeness, have explained all his peculiarities in disease and health by attributing them to a recondite form of epilepsy. Exhausted and nervous, the sufferer might well, as was the case, be found in tears before the portrait of his son; he might well lift up his voice, as he was heard to do, against the destiny which had played him false. But he was quite shrewd enough to see that during his absence no regency could be trusted, and he arranged to conduct affairs by special messengers. Joseph was to preside and give the casting-vote in the council of state; to Lucien was given a seat in the same body; but the supreme power rested in Napoleon. When Wellington replaced Castlereagh at the Congress of Vienna, it was quickly apparent that he was greater in the field than at the council-board. Both he and Bluecher desired to assume the offensive quickly; but inasmuch as Alexander was determined to retain his ascendancy in the coalition, and as each power insisted on its due share in the struggle, it was arranged to begin hostilities on June twenty-seventh, the earliest date at which the Russian troops could reach the confines of France. There were to be three armies. Schwarzenberg, with two hundred and fifty thousand men, comprising the Austrian, Russian, and Bavarian contingents, was to attack across the upper Rhine; Bluecher, with one hundred and fifty thousand Prussians, was to advance across the lower Rhine; and Wellington in the Netherlands was to collect an army of one hundred and fifty thousand, compounded of Dutch, Belgians, Hanoverians, and some thirty-eight thousand British, who could be there assembled. The two latter armies were in existence by the first of June, but Wellington was dissatisfied with the quality of his motley force; even the English contingent was not the best possible, for his Peninsular veterans had been sent to find their match in Jackson's riflemen at the battle of New Orleans.