Book excerpt: Excerpt from Notes of a Life N 0 one who reads the letters here brought together will have any doubt of the truth of the title which Mr Stodart Walker applies to Professor Blackie The happiest man of his century.' The letters cover a period of sixty years, and besides enabling us to come to close quarters with a very remarkable personality, they supply interesting glimpses of the most prominent men of the nineteenth century, in politics, art, and literature. 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.