Excerpt from The Sailor King, Vol. 1: William the Fourth, His Court and His Subjects HE reign of William IV., whilst too remote for personal recollection and too recent for history, covers a space in our annals of which comparatively little is known Yet its seven years are wells of interest, arismg from sources intellectual rather than political; for the Sailor King reigned over subjects whose works remain our proud heritage, whose names are dear to us as those of kin, whose intimate histories, touched with the glamour of romance or with direful tragedy, exercise a spell impossible to fiction and felt only in watching the actions of mortals unconsciously obeying the dictates of fate. 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.