GUSTAVE COURBET ” 82 _From a picture by himself in the Louvre_ THE EMPRESS MARIE THERESIA ” 130 _From an engraving after a painting by Mytens_ THE MARQUIS OF HERTFORD ” 158 _From a bust in the Wallace Collection_ SIR RICHARD WALLACE ” 192 _From a bust in the Wallace Collection_ IVAN TURGENIEV ” 204 _From an etching by E. Hedouin_ FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE ” 212 RICHARD WAGNER ” 218 THE EMPEROR PAUL ” 248 THE EMPEROR ALEXANDER I. ” 260 _From an engraving after a portrait by Wolkoff_ THE EMPEROR NICHOLAS II. ” 284 _From a lithograph_ PRINCE GORTCHAKOFF ” 296 INTRODUCTION BY EDMUND GOSSE, C.B. The publication of Lord Redesdale’s “Memories”—which was one of the most successful autobiographies of recent times—familiarized thousands of readers with the principal adventures of a very remarkable man, but, when all was said and done, left an incomplete impression of his tastes and occupations on the minds of those who were not familiar with his earlier writings. His literary career had been a very irregular one. He took up literature rather late, and produced a book that has become a classic—“Tales of Old Japan.” He did not immediately pursue this success, but became involved in public activities of many kinds, which distracted his attention. In his sixtieth year he brought out “The Bamboo Garden,” and from that time—until, in his eightieth year, he died in full intellectual energy—he constantly devoted himself to the art of writing. His zeal, his ambition, were wonderful; but it was impossible to overlook the disadvantage from which that ambition and that zeal suffered in the fact that for the first sixty years of his life the writer had cultivated the art but casually and sporadically. He retained, in spite of all the labour which he expended, a certain stiffness, an air of the amateur, of which he himself was always acutely conscious.