Seward, and the King of the Cannibal Isl- howling and peals of convulsive laughter, ands.

21. The original Book of Mormon, as about the only original work which America has produced since Knickerbocker's History. 22. Specimens of American Apes, and Nat-pated for England, and expressed, as far as uralized Irishmen, stuffed.-Punch, 21 Dec.

A GOD-SPEED TO THE CANADA-BOUND. From the general to the private, not one among

From The Examiner.

Memoirs, Letters, and Remains of Alexis de Tocqueville. Translated from the French by the Translator of " Napoleon's Correspondence with King Joseph." Two volumes. Macmillan and Co.

WHEN the original French edition of this work was published, some months ago, we noticed it at considerable length; and although large additions have been made to the present version, they are not of a kind to call for much additional comment; though we avail ourselves of them for the purpose of further illustrating the feelings and opinions of M. de Tocqueville on the public events of France and England as they took place, the source from which our extracts are taken being the journals kept by Mr. Senior when visiting his friend. As the translator observes, these journals are "a slight and inadequate, but still the only record of M. de Tocqueville's conversation." Without further preface, then, we proceed to show their character. A curious feature of the popular feeling in France with respect to that feudalism which it was the first object of the French Revolution to extinguish, is shown in the following passage:

"We talked of Thiers' 'History of the Empire.' Its defect,' said Tocqueville, is its inadequate appreciation of the causes, intrinsic and extrinsic, which united to form Napoleon. Few historics give to these two sets of causes their due or their relative cumstances in which their hero was placed, weight. Some attribute too much to the cirothers to the accidents of his character. Napoleon, though gigantic in war and in legislation, was imperfect and incoherent in both. No other great general, perhaps no general whatever, suffered so many defeats. have lost two; but who ever survived the Many have lost one army, some perhaps destruction of four? So in legislation, he subdued anarchy, he restored our finances, he did much to which France owes in part her power and her glory. But he deprived "You saw the roofless tower in the court. her not only of liberty, but of the wish for My grandfather used it as a colombier. He liberty; he enveloped her in a network of kept there three thousand pigeons. No one centralization which stifles individual and was allowed to kill them, and no one else corporate resistance, and prepares the way in the commune could keep them. In 1793, for the despotism of an assembly or of an when the peasants were the masters, they emperor. Assuming him to have been perdid no harm to any of the rest of our prop- fectly selfish, nothing could be better planned erty. We have lived among them as pro- or better executed. He seized with a sagactectors and friends for centuries; but they ity which is really marvellous, out of the rose en masse against the pigeons, killed elements left to him by the Convention, every one of them, and reduced the tower those which enabled him to raise himself, to its present state. When I first was a can- and to level everything else; which enabled didate I failed, not because I was not per- his will to penetrate into the recesses of prosonally popular, but because I was a gen- vincial and even of private life, and rendered tilhomme. I was met everywhere by the those below him incapable of acting or thinkproverb, Les chats prennent les souris.' ing, almost of wishing, for themselves. My opponent was of an humble family which Thiers does not sufficiently explain how it had risen to wealth and distinction in the was that Napoleon was able to do this, or Revolution. This is the most favorable why it was that he chose to do it; nor has combination in the hands of a man of abil- his private character been over well drawn ity. Mere wealth is mischievous; it gives as a whole. There is much truth in Bourrino influence, and it excites envy. The only enne, though mixed, and inseparably mixed, time when it led to political power was just with much invention. Napoleon's taste was after the Revolution of 1848. Every pos- defective in everything, in small things as sessor of property, and few persons in the well as in great ones; in books, in art, and provinces are quite without it, was alarmed; in women, as well as in ambition and in and the greatest proprietors were selected glory. The history of the Empire and the as representatives, because they were sup- history of the Emperor are still to be writposed to have the greatest stakes. Mere ten. I hope one day to write them.'"

ment as follows:

6

On the changes which have taken place in | no one but a native can relish. There are French literature during the last hundred parts of Shakspeare which you admire, and and fifty years, De Tocqueville passed judg- I have no doubt very justly, in which I cannot see any beauty." Can you,' I said, read the "Henriade," or the "Pucelle "?" "If,' said Tocqueville, Bossuet or Pas-Not the "Henriade," he answered, nor cal were to come to life, they would think us can anybody else; nor do I much like to receding into semi-barbarism; they would read the "Pucelle," but it is a wonderful be unable to enter into the ideas of our fash- piece of workmanship. How Voltaire could ionable writers, they would be disgusted by have disgraced such exquisite language, their style, and be puzzled even by their lan- poetry, and wit, by such grossness, is inconguage.' What,' I asked, 'do you consider ceivable; but I can recollect when grave your golden age?' The latter part,' he magistrates and statesmen knew it by heart. answered, of the seventeenth century. Men If you wish for pure specimens of Voltaire's wrote then solely for fame, and they ad- wit, and ease, and command of language, dressed a public small and highly cultivated. look at his "Pièces Diverses." As for his French literature was young; the highest tragedies, I cannot read them-they are artiposts were vacant; it was comparatively easy the best writer of French that ever used the ficial-so, indeed, are Racine's, though he is to be distinguished. Extravagance was not necessary to attract attention. Style then language. In Corneille there are passages was the mere vehicle of thought; first of really of the highest order. But it is our all to be perspicuous, next to be concise, was prose writers, not our poets, that are our all that they aimed at. In the eighteenth glory; and them you can enjoy as well as I century competition had begun. It had be- can. come difficult to be original by matter, so men tried to strike by style; to clearness Of the coup d'état of the 2nd of Decemand brevity, ornament was added-soberly ber, M. de Tocqueville expressed himself in and in good taste, but yet it betrayed labor these terms:and effort. To the ornamental has now succeeded the grotesque; just as the severe style of our old Norman architecture gradually became florid, and ultimately flamboyant. If I were to give a scriptural genealogy of our modern popular writers, I should say that Rosseau lived twenty years, and then begat Bernardin de St. Pierre; that Bernardin de St. Pierre lived twenty years, and then begat Chateaubriand; that Chateaubriand lived twenty years, and then begat Victor Hugo; and that Victor Hugo, being tempted of the devil, is begetting every day.' Whose son,' I asked, 'is Lamartine?' Oh,' said Tocqueville, he is of a different breed; his father, if he had one, is Chenier; but one might almost say that he is ex se ipso natus. When he entered the poetical world, all men's minds were still heaving with the Revolution. It had filled them with vague conceptions and undefined wishes, to which Lamartine, without making them distinct enough to show their emptiness or their inconsistency, gave something like form and color. His 46 Meditations," especially the first part of them, found an accomplice in every reader. He seemed to express thoughts of which every one was conscious, though no one before had embodied them in words.' I said that I feared that I should be unable to read them; and that, in fact, there was little French poetry that I could read. 'I have no doubt,' answered Tocqueville, that there is much poetry, and good poetry, that

"The 18th Brumaire was nearer to this, for that ended as this has begun, in.a military tyranny. But the 18th Brumaire was almost as much a civil as a military revolution. A majority in the councils was with Bonaparte. Louis Napoleon had not a real friend in the assembly. All the educated classes supported the 18th Brumaire; all the educated classes repudiate the 2nd of December. Bonaparte's consular chair was sustained by all the elite of France. This man cannot obtain a decent supporter. For a real parallel you must go back eighteen hundred years.' I said that some persons, for whose judgment I had the highest respect, seemed to treat it as a contest between two conspirators, the Assembly and the President, and to think the difference between his conduct and theirs to be that he struck first. This,' said Tocqueville I utterly deny. He, indeed, began to conspire from the 10th of December, 1848. His direct instructions to Oudinot and his letter to Ney, only a few months after his election, showed his determination not to submit to parliamentary government. Then followed his dismissal of ministry after ministry, until he had degraded the office to a clerkship. Then came the semi-regal progress; then the reviews of Satory, the encouragement of treasonable cries, the selection for all the high appointments in the army of Paris of men whose characters fitted them to be tools.

'was not ours.

candid criticism, I will give you one. You couple as events mutually dependent the continuance of the Imperial Government, and the continuance of the Anglo-Gallic Al

Then he publicly insulted the Assembly at Dijon; and at last, in October, we knew that his plans were laid. It was then only that we began to think what were our means of defence; but that was no more a conspi-liance. I believe this opinion not only to racy than it is a conspiracy in travellers to be untrue, but to be the reverse of the truth. look for their pistols when they see a band I believe the Empire and the Alliance to be of robbers advancing. M. Baze's proposi- not merely not mutually dependent, but to tion was absurd, only because it was imprac- be incompatible, except upon terms which ticable. It was a precaution against imme- you are resolved never to grant. The Emdiate danger; but if it had been voted, it pire is essentially warlike, and war in the could not have been executed; the army had mind of a Bonaparte, and of the friends of already been so corrupted, that it would have a Bonaparte, means the Rhine. This war disregarded the orders of the Assembly. I is merely a stepping-stone. It is carried on have often talked over our situation with for purposes in which the mass of the people Lamoricière and my other military friends. of France take no interest. Up to the presWe saw what was coming, as clearly as we ent time its burdens have been little felt, now look back to it, but we had no means as it has been supported by loans, and the of preventing it.' But was not your in- limits of the legal conscription have not tended law of responsibility,' I said, an at- been exceeded. But when the necessity tack on your part ? That law,' he said, comes for increased taxation and anticipated It was sent up to us by the conscriptions, Louis Napoleon must have reConseil d'Etat, which had been two years course to the real passions of the French and a half employed on it, and ought to have Bourgeoisie and peasantry, the love of consent it to us much sooner. We thought it quest, et la haine de l'Anglais. Don't fancy dangerous-that is to say, we thought that, that such feelings are dead; they are scarcely though quite right in itself, it would irritate asleep; they might be roused as soon as he the President and that in our defenceless thinks they are wanted. What do you supstate it was unwise to do so. The Bureau pose was the effect in France of Louis Nato which it was referred refused to declare poleon's triumph in England? Those who urgent-a proof that it would not have know England attributed it to the ignorance passed with the clauses which, though rea- and childishness of the multitude. Those sonable, the President thought fit to disap- who thought that the shouts of the mob had prove. Our conspiracy was that of the lamb any real meaning, either hung down their against the wolf. Though I have said,' he heads in shame at the self-degradation of a continued, that he has been conspiring ever great nation, or attributed them to fear,since his election, I do not believe that he the latter was the general feeling. intended to strike so soon. His plan was faut," said all our lower classes, “ que ces to wait till next March, when the fears of gens là aient grand peur de nous.” May, 1852, would be most intense. Two cuse, in the second place, all the Royalist circumstances forced him on more rapidly. parties of dislike of England. Do you supOne was the candidature of the Prince de pose that you are more popular with the othJoinville. He thought him the only danger-ers? that the Republicans love your arisous competitor. The other was an agitation set on foot by the Legitimists, in the Conseils généraux, for the repeal of the law of the 31st of May. That law was his moral weapon against the Assembly, and he feared that, if he delayed, it might be abolished without him.""

"Il

You ac

tocracy or the Imperialists your freedom? The real friends of England are the friends of her institutions. They are the body, small perhaps numerically, and now beaten down, of those who adore constitutional liberty: they have maintained the mutual good feeling between France and England against the passions of the Republicans, and the prejudices of the Legitimists. I trust, as The Anglo-Gallic Alliance did not seem you trust, that this good feeling is to conto M. de Tocqueville likely to be of long en- tinue, but it is on precisely opposite grounds. durance. Mr. Senior had asked him his My hopes are founded, not on the permaopinion on an article of his on the state of nence, but on the want of permanence of the the Continent, which had been published in Empire. I do not believe that a great nathe North British Review in February, 1855, tion will be long led by its tail instead of by a few months before the conversation re-throw of this tyranny may not take place its head. My only fear is, that the over

corded:

early enough to save us from the war with England, which I believe to be the inevitable

you ask me,' he answered, for a consequence of its duration.'"