Old King Victor Amadeus of Sardinia had solemnly abdicated in favor of his Son; went, for a twelvemonth or more, into private felicity with an elderly Lady-love whom he had long esteemed the first of women;--tired of such felicity, after a twelvemonth; demanded his crown back, and could not get it! Lady-love and he are taken prisoners; lodged in separate castles: [2d September, 1730 abdicated, went to Chambery; reclaims, is locked in Rivoli, 8th October, 1731 (news of it just come to Schulenburg); dies there, 31st October, 1732, his 67th year.] and the wrath of the proud old gentleman is Olympian in character,--split an oak table, smiting it while he spoke (say the cicerones);--and his silence, and the fiery daggers he looks, are still more emphatic. But the young fellow holds out; you cannot play handy-dandy with a king's crown, your Majesty! say his new Ministers. Is and will continue King. "Not a bad stroke of him," thinks Schulenburg,----"especially if his Father meant to play him the same trick," that is, clap him in prison. Not a bad stroke;--which perhaps there is another that could imitate, "if HIS Papa gave him the opportunity! But THIS Papa will take good care; and the Queen will not forget the Sardinian business, when he talks again of abdicating," as he does when in ill-humor.-- "But now had not we better have been friends with England, should war rise upon that Sardinian business? General Schulenburg,"--the famed Venetian Field-marshal, bruiser of the Turks in Candia, [Same who was beaten by Charles XII. before; a worthy soldier nevertheless, say the Authorities: LIFE of him by Varnhagen von Ense (_Biographische Denkmale,_ Berlin, 1845).] my honored Uncle, who sometimes used to visit his Sister the Maypole, now EMERITA, in London, and sip beer and take tobacco on an evening, with George I. of famous memory,--he also "writes me this Victor-Amadeus news, from Paris;" so that it is certain; Ex-King locked in Rivoli near a fortnight ago: "he, General Schulenburg, says farther, To judge by the outside, all appears very quiet; but many think, at the bottom of the bag it will not be the same."-- "I am, with respect," your Excellency's much in buckram, "LE COMTE DE SCHOULENBOURG." [Forster, iii. 73-75.] So far Lieutenant-General Schulenburg; whom we thank for these contemporary glimpses of a young man that has become historical, and of the scene he lived in. And with these three accidental utterances, as if they (which are alone left) had been the sum of all he said in the world, let the Lieutenant-General withdraw now into silence: he will turn up twice again, after half a score of years, once in a nobler than talking attitude, the close-harnessed, stalwart, slightly atrabiliar military gentleman of the old Prussian school.