ANECDOTES OF A BRITISH VETERAN.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3512, 10 October 1882, Page 4

ANECDOTES OF A BRITISH VETERAN.

Time, indeed, seems to liave wings, when blithe Balcarres Ramsay is found writing that he began his military career some forty years ago. It seems only the other day that he was quite a young captain in the Scvonty-iifth Regiment, and yet that must he over thirty years since. In 1845, at a little dinner which the author gave at the Coventry Club, now the St. James, he invited Prince bollykoff to meet the French Pretender. The next day the Russian magnate expressed surprise at the curiosity which Prince Louis had expressed about the strength and constituents of the Muscovite army, and when Colonel Ramsay met Prince Soltykoff after tho Crimean war, the two agreed tbllfc this questioning had a. ■very practical purpose. Three years later, when Prince Louis was somewhat under a cloiid, owing to tho abortive attempt at Boulogne—the ' Ra' was the only club that opened its doors to him—young Rams.iy was much thrown into his company. ' Often,' he writes, ' I sat late into the night with him quito alone; when, after showing me relics of his mother, Q.ueen Horteuse, he sat playing with a dog which had been his companion in prison at Ham, or looking dreamily into the fire-place, seldom speaking, but every now and then soliloquising and talking of what he would do when he was Emperor of the French.' Some of the most interesting and amusing experiences recorded in these volumes are those which happened to the author when a mere lad, travelling about the Continent in charge of a tutor. It was at the Villa Salviata, then belonging to Mr Yansittart, but which afterward came into the possession of Grisi, that the young scapegrace had an adventure with the great Catalina. Prince Poniatowski having begged tho famous cantatrice to favour the company with a song, she got up from her seat and moved toward the piano. But before reaching it she changed her mind, and returned to her seat without looking behind her. ' In my anxiety to hear the , great singer,' said the Colonel, ' I deposited an ice cream, red and

rosy, on her chair, which I had not time to remove before she plunged down upon it. Tho weather being very warm, and the fair prima donna's garments of tho thinnest texture, the sensation was evidently a vivid one. She jumped up, oxclaimiug, ' What is this ?' and then saw her white muslin dress dyed red. I was standing by, with my mouth wide open, petrified with terror, when the songstress opened upon me such a volley of choice Tuscan vernacular that I fnirly fled. Jumping out of alow window I escaped, and never stopped until I found myself within the walls at Porto San Gallo.' While stopping at Treves, Ihe lad sat next a Prussian general of cavalry, who related to him how that George IV, once gave a dinner to all the Prussian officers at Hanover, and made them all drunk with the exception of the narrator himself. So pleased was the 'first gentleman in Europe,' with the Bacchanalian prowess of the one exception, that he presented him with a carriage as a token of his royal appreciation. —London Globe.