"Admirable feat of Strategy! What a General, this Prince Karl!" exclaimed mankind,--Cause-of-Liberty mankind with special enthusiasm; and took to writing LIVES of Prince Karl, [For instance, _The Life of his Highness Prince Charles of &c., with &c. &c._ (London, 1746); one of the most distracted Blotches ever published under the name of Book;--wakening thoughts of a public dimness very considerable indeed, to which this could offer itself as lamp!] as well as tar-burning and TE-DEUM-ing on an extensive scale. For it had sent the Cause of Liberty bounding up again to the top of things, this of crossing the Rhine, in such fashion. And, in effect, the Cause of Liberty, and Prince Karl himself, had risen hereby to their acme or culminating point in World-History; not to continue long at such height, little as they dreamt of that, among their tar-burnings. The feat itself--contrived by Nadasti, people say, and executed (what was the real difficulty) by Traun--brought Prince Karl very great renown, this Year; and is praised by Friedrich himself, now and afterwards, as masterly, as Julius Caesar's method, and the proper way of crossing rivers (when executable) in face of an enemy. And indeed Prince Karl, owing to Traun or not, is highly respectable in the way of Generalship at present; and did in these Five Months, from June onward, really considerable things. At his very acme of Life, as well as of Generalship; which, alas, soon changed, poor man; never to culminate again. He had got, at the beginning of the Year, the high Maria Theresa's one Sister, Archduchess Maria Anna, to Wife; [Age then twenty-five gone: "born 14th September, 1718; married to Prince Karl 7th January, 1744; died, of childbirth, 16th December same year" (Hormayr, _OEsterreichischer Plutarch,_ iv. erstes Baudchen, 54).] the crown of long mutual attachment; she safe now at Brussels, diligent Co-Regent, and in a promising family-way; he here walking on victorious:--need any man be happier? No man can be supremely happy long; and this General's strategic felicity and his domestic were fatally cut down almost together. The Cause of Liberty, too, now at the top of its orbit, was--But let us stick by our Excerpting: