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

The St. Lawrence has its sleet and fogs, its ice- May our blessing serve to strengthen, our prayer

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 66 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:

birth is worse than mere wealth; it excites not only envy, but fear. The remembrance of the Marian persecutions is still vivid in England after three hundred years. Our fears of the revival of the tour et colombier are as fantastic as your dread of the faggot and the rack; but why should they not last as long?"

Here is a criticism on a celebrated writer, with the prospective ambition of supplying his defects, which unfortunately was never realized :

"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 ever 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:

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"If,' said Tocqueville, Bossuet or Pascal were to come to life, they would think us receding into semi-barbarism; they would be unable to enter into the ideas of our fashionable writers, they would be disgusted by their style, and be puzzled even by their language.' What,' I asked, 'do you consider your golden age?' The latter part,' he answered, of the seventeenth century. Men

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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- have no doubt very justly, in which I cannot see any beauty." Can you,' I said, read the "Henriade," or the "Pucelle "?' Not the "Henriade," he answered, nor read the "Pucelle," but it is a wonderful can anybody else; nor do I much like to piece of workmanship. How Voltaire could have disgraced such exquisite language, poetry, and wit, by such grossness, is inconceivable; but I can recollect when grave magistrates and statesmen knew it by heart. If you wish for pure specimens of Voltaire's wit, and ease, and command of language, look at his "Pièces Diverses." As for his tragedies, I cannot read them-they are artithe best writer of French that ever used the ficial-so, indeed, are Racine's, though he is language. In Corneille there are passages really of the highest order. But it is our prose writers, not our poets, that are our glory; and them you can enjoy as well as I can.

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wrote then solely for fame, and they addressed a public small and highly cultivated. French literature was young; the highest posts were vacant; it was comparatively easy to be distinguished. Extravagance was not necessary to attract attention. Style then was the mere vehicle of thought; first of all to be perspicuous, next to be concise, was all that they aimed at. In the eighteenth century competition had begun. It had become 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 " 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. have no doubt,' answered Tocqueville, that there is much poetry, and good poetry, that

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"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.

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 look for their pistols when they see a band of robbers advancing. M. Baze's proposition was absurd, only because it was impracticable. It was a precaution against immediate danger; but if it had been voted, it could not have been executed; the army had already been so corrupted, that it would have disregarded the orders of the Assembly. I have often talked over our situation with Lamoricière and my other military friends. We saw what was coming, as clearly as we now look back to it, but we had no means of preventing it.' But was not your intended law of responsibility,' I said, an attack on your part ? That law,' he said, was not ours. It was sent up to us by the Conseil d'Etat, which had been two years and a half employed on it, and ought to have sent it to us much sooner. We thought it dangerous-that is to say, we thought that, though quite right in itself, it would irritate the President-and that in our defenceless state it was unwise to do so. The Bureau to which it was referred refused to declare it urgent-a proof that it would not have passed with the clauses which, though reasonable, the President thought fit to disapprove. Our conspiracy was that of the lamb against the wolf. Though I have said,' he continued, that he has been conspiring ever since his election, I do not believe that he intended to strike so soon. His plan was to wait till next March, when the fears of May, 1852, would be most intense. Two circumstances forced him on more rapidly. One was the candidature of the Prince de Joinville. He thought him the only dangerous 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.'"

be untrue, but to be the reverse of the truth. I believe the Empire and the Alliance to be not merely not mutually dependent, but to be incompatible, except upon terms which you are resolved never to grant. The Empire is essentially warlike, and war in the mind of a Bonaparte, and of the friends of a Bonaparte, means the Rhine. This war is merely a stepping-stone. It is carried on for purposes in which the mass of the people of France take no interest. Up to the present time its burdens have been little felt, as it has been supported by loans, and the limits of the legal conscription have not been exceeded. But when the necessity comes for increased taxation and anticipated conscriptions, Louis Napoleon must have recourse to the real passions of the French Bourgeoisie and peasantry, the love of conquest, et la haine de l'Anglais. Don't fancy that such feelings are dead; they are scarcely asleep; they might be roused as soon as he thinks they are wanted. What do you suppose was the effect in France of Louis Napoleon's triumph in England? Those who know England attributed it to the ignorance and childishness of the multitude. Those who thought that the shouts of the mob had any real meaning, either hung down their heads in shame at the self-degradation of a great nation, or attributed them to fear,the latter was the general feeling. faut," said all our lower classes, “ gens là aient grand peur de nous." cuse, in the second place, all the Royalist parties of dislike of England. Do you suppose that you are more popular with the othcrs? that the Republicans love your aristocracy 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 you trust, that this good feeling is to conprejudices of the Legitimists. I trust, as tinue, but it is on precisely opposite grounds. My hopes are founded, not on the permanence, but on the want of permanence of the Empire. I do not believe that a great naits head. My only fear is, that the overtion will be long led by its tail instead of by throw of this tyranny may not take place early enough to save us from the war with England, which I believe to be the inevitable "Since you ask me,' he answered, for a consequence of its duration.'”

The Anglo-Gallic Alliance did not seem to M. de Tocqueville likely to be of long endurance. Mr. Senior had asked him his opinion on an article of his on the state of the Continent, which had been published in the North British Review in February, 1855, a few months before the conversation recorded:

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better,' I said, than the present education, since the women of that time were superior to ours.' 'It was so far better,' he answered, that it did no harm. A girl at that time She came from the was taught nothing. convent a sheet of white paper. Now her mind is a paper scribbled over with trash. The women of that time were thrown into "They have lost it,' said De Tocqueville, a world far superior to ours, and with the partly in consequence of the gross vulgar- sagacity, curiosity, and flexibility of French ity of our dominant passions, and partly women, caught the knowledge and tact and from their own nullity. They are like Lon-expression from the men.'"