Excerpt from Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C. B., D. C. L, Vol. 1 of 2 To Reeve, young, clever, and aspiring, nothing could be more wholesome than the freedom of this society; and the influence of his early initiation in the world of Paris is strongly marked throughout his whole career. When after wards settled in London as a Government servant and a knight of the pen, his youthful training, his intimacy with the leaders of Parisian thought and Parisian manners, and his perfect knowledge of the language, all tended to push him into an exceptional position, both socially and politi cally, while his acquaintance with many out-of - the-way subjects of study - Bohemian and Polish history, for instance - left him in readiness to take advantage of any exceptional opportunity. It was thus that his services came to be used by premiers and presidents of the Council in unofficial embassies, with the idea, perhaps, that the soft answer which turneth away wrath could sometimes be better con veyed, in the first instance, by a personal friend who was known to be in the confidence of ministers, and yet without any laws standi. This is what I have endeavoured to bring into prominence in the following pages, the form of which has necessarily been shaped by the nature of the materials with which I had to work. 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.