Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century (Classic Reprint)

Book excerpt: Excerpt from Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century For these sketches of minor celebrities of the nineteenth century, it has been my aim to choose subjects whose ex periences seem to illustrate the life - more especially the literary and artistic life - of the first half of the century; and who (y late years, at any rate, have not been over whelmed by the attentions of the minor biographer. Having some faith in the theory that the verdict of foreigners is equivalent to that of contemporary posterity, I have in cluded two aliens in the group. A visitor to our shores, whether he be a German princeling like pilckler-muskau, or a gilded democrat like N. P. Willis, may be expected to observe and comment upon many traits of national life and manners that would escape the notice of a native chronicler. Whereas certain readers of a former volume - 'little Memoirs of the Eighteenth Century - seem to have been distressed by the fact that the majority of the characters died in the nineteenth centuiy, it is perhaps meet that I should apologise for the chronology of this present volume, in which all the heroes and heroines, save one, were born in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. But I would venture to submit that a man is not, necessarily, the child of the century in which he is born, or of that in which he dies; rather is he the child of the century which sees the finest ower of his achievement. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."