Excerpt from the Preface: "The sketches now offered to the reader have most of them been already published in parts, in magazines and reviews. I have been advised to collect them into one work, in order to make their tendency and their spirit better understood. The end I proposed to myself at the time I wrote them, was to efface the prejudices which the decrepit schools of the Revolution, and of the Empire, had cast over the vast intellects who have had the direction of the government in various countries, or who still continue to guide the state. This end, I think, was partly gained by the four sketches of the career of Prince Metternich, Counts Pozzo di Borgo and Nesselrode, and the Duke of Wellington. I have considered it the more essential to complete this publication at present, because, for some years past, people appear only to take pleasure in extolling those vi] who have been engaged in the work of destruction. The most illustrious public bodies take pleasure in listening to the praises of those who have ruined the old state of society, and no man is considered clever, learned, or virtuous, unless he has been at least half a regicide. As for me I request a little space for the politicians who create, preserve, or add to a state, -for the men whose works still endure, and survive all those who declaimed against them. I would give all the fame of the Radicals of 1791, of the year III., or the year VIII., for the smallest portion of the abilities of Cardinal Richelieu."