F the making of many books there is at present no end; any more than there was in the days of the Preacher. If I am now adding to their number, it is not so much for the purpose of recounting all that I saw and did during the forty-five years of my diplomatic life, as of endeavouring to throw fresh light on some of the great political events with which I have been either directly or indirectly associated. From the point of View of political work Sofia and Petrograd were my two most irnportant posts, and, though I have given sketches of my earlier ones, it is with Bulgaria and Russia that the major part of this book is con cerned. During my five years' mission to the former I assisted at the declaration of Bulgarian independence and the subsequent recognition of Prince Ferdinand as King. At the latter, where I spent rather more than seven years, I witnessed the outbreak of the Great War, the overthrow of the Empire, the rise and fall of the Provisional Government, and the Bolshevik Revolution. 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.