The Book we excerpt from is _Memoires du Comte de Hordt_ (second edition, 2 volumes 12mo, Berlin, 1789). This is Bookseller Pitra's redaction of the Hordt Autobiography (Berlin, 1788, was Pitra's first edition): several years after, how many is not said, nor whether Hordt (who had become a dignitary in Berlin society before Pitra's feat) was still living or not, a "M. Borelly, Professor in the Military School," undertook a second considerably enlarged and improved redaction;--of which latter there is an English Translation; easy enough to read; but nearly without meaning, I should fear, to readers unacquainted with the scene and subject. [_Memoirs of the Count de Hordt:_ London, 1806: 2 vols. 12mo,--only the FIRST volume of which (unavailable here) is in my possession.] Hordt was reckoned a perfectly veracious, intelligent kind of man: but he seldom gives the least date, specification or precise detail; and his Book reads, not like the Testimony of an Eye-witness, which it is, and valuable when you understand it; but more like some vague Forgery, compiled by a destitute inventive individual, regardless of the Ten Commandments (sparingly consulting even his file of Old Newspapers), and writing a Book which would deserve the tread-mill, were there any Police in his trade!-- WEDNESDAY, 6th JANUARY, 1762, Hordt's vacant Hades of an existence in the Citadel of Petersburg was broken by a loud sound: three minute-guns went off from different sides, close by; and then whole salvos, peal after peal: "Czarina gone overnight, Peter III. Czar in her stead!" said the Officer, rushing in to tell Hordt; to whom it was as news of resurrection from the dead. "Evening of same day, an Aide-de-Camp of the new Czar came to announce my liberty; equipage waiting to take me at once to his Russian Majesty. Asked him to defer it till the following day--so agitated was I." And indeed the Czar, busy taking acclamations, oaths of fealty, riding about among his Troops by torchlight, could have made little of me that evening. [Hermann, _Geschichte des Russischen Staats,_ v. 241.] "Ultimately, my presentation was deferred till Sunday" January 10th, "that it might be done with proper splendor, all the Nobility being then usually assembled about his Majesty."