Excerpt from Random Recollections of Courts and Society Tradition is the diary of nations, Memory is the diary of individuals. Neither are implicitly to be trusted as long as they are not supplemented by written words or confirmed by subsequent events. Believe nothing that you hear, and only half you see, is an axiom admirably adapted to actuality, but Time steps in, and with Experience holding up its searching lamp they certify, correct, complete or eliminate the inchoate elements, and out of the residue of their expurgating chemistry the simple truth arises. 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.