Excerpt from Notes and Sketches of the Paris Exhibition Unfortunately I am constrained to Live - although, of my living, those same critics, perhaps, following Cardinal Richelieu in re the lampoon writer, may not see the necessity - and, finally, I am not entirely my own master. I am one of the servants of a Centurion, and when he says "Go," I am fain to go, wheresoever the billet may be for. Since I last had the honour of addressing the public through a book-medium (in "From Waterloo to the Peninsula") I have been compelled to go to a great many places. I was sent from the south of Spain to the north of Italy, and thence went from Trieste to Vienna. I came down again to Italy in June, when the Prusso-Austro-Italian war broke out; left my household gods in Venice, "in a state of siege;" joined Garibaldi at Como, campaigned with him until the fatal armistice which gave Venetia to Italy at the expense of her honour; and then, after wandering for two months longer up and down Lombardy and the Romagna, I returned to the Adriatic city to witness the triumphal entry of Victor Emmanuel and the Italian troops. I was sent from Venice to Florence, and from Florence to Rome, in time for the evacuation of that city by the French army of occupation. I wintered in Rome, and was enjoying the early days of spring at Naples, when a peremptory telegram bade me come to Paris at once, and "do" the Exhibition. I found two colleagues in Paris, one of whom had been at Sadowa, and the other, who had been with me in the Tyrol, is now in Abyssinia, whither I was only, myself, prevented from going, ultimately, by "urgent private affairs" which required my presence in England. 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.