For sixpence more, on the other side! The marvel, by familiar life, Grows, and attaches to the wife, By whom it grows. Thus, silly Girl, In the oyster of the universe; And though, in time, he'll treat you worse, Not that I'd have you e'er let fall But only don't be cowardly, Is looking. As 'tis own'd by men My Dear, I know that dreadful thought And how a merciful Providence Still make it strange with stratagem, To cheat them almost seems a sin! If you're but prudent, year by year My love to John! And pray, my Dear, By your absurd, new-married pride, That scorns the world's slow gather'd sense; Ties up the hands of Providence ; Rules babes, before there's hope of one, Better than mothers e'er have done; And, for your poor particular, But, though you yet may much improve, In marriage be it still confess'd There's not much merit at the best. Which else would not have had the need, But what's that to the varied want So used, has hope. She sends her love, ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE1 BY HENRY SIDGWICK. In the cluster of great writers who were swept from the world in the fatal year 1859, Alexis de Tocqueville holds a distinguished place. Perhaps there is no foreign author of this century whose works have been received in England with so universal an echo of applause and assent. His first and only complete work-the " Democracy in America ". was, from the nature of its subject, one which especially excited English interest and appealed to English judgment and the unique and strongly defined position which he occupies, as a political thinker, in France, gives him at once a peculiar value as a teacher for us, and a peculiar claim on our sympathy. He himself ever manifested a more than stranger's interest for England, where, as his correspondence will show, he had many friends: his admiration for our institutions and character was no mere theoretic enthusiasm, but was founded on a close acquaintance and a temperate 1 "Memoir, Letters, and Remains of Alexis de Tocqueville. Translated from the French by the Translator of Napoleon's Correspondence with King Joseph. With large additions. Two vols. Macmillan & Co. Cambridge and London. appreciation of our merits and faults alike and he attached so much importance to the estimate formed in England of his writings, that in one letter he speaks of her as "almost a second fatherland intellectually." It was only a fit testimony to these close relations, that English voices should join in the tribute of regret paid by his countrymen to his memory. The recent publication, by M. Gustave de Beaumont, of his friend's remains, has been the signal for some utterances of English feeling. M. Beaumont's collection has been received, both in France and in England, with an eagerness fully merited. In the case of a man who wrote so little and so carefully as Tocqueville, the few fragments left behind unpublished are of peculiar value; while the letters that M. Beaumont has given to the world seem to have been selected and arranged with skill and good taste; and the short memoir which forms a prelude to the collection is gracefully written, and shows an enlightened appreciation of Tocqueville's character, as well literary as personal. The faults of the work are chiefly those of omission. In the first place, I think M. de Beaumont's refusal to publish anything that has not received the author's last touches, displays an excessive scrupulousness, an exaggerated sensitiveness for his friend's fame. It is tantalizing to learn how large and how valuable a portion of the fruits of Tocqueville's studies is kept from us for this reason. When we read those letters of Tocqueville, in which we are admitted, as it were, into his literary workshop; when we see the eager determination with which he ensures his originality, the laborious patience with which he gathers his ideas one by one in their native soil; we feel that thoughts so slowly and carefully obtained ought not lightly to be withheld from the world, because they have not been completely arranged and polished. M. Beaumont himself notices how he "observed much and noted little;" how rarely he found himself mistaken in those original notes; how rarely he did more than develop them; how frequently they were incorporated verbatim into the substance of the ultimate work. We cannot but regret that these cogent reasons did not induce his editor to modify his rigid resolution. Nor is the brief memoir prefixed to the collection quite satisfactory. The sketch is flowing and interesting; the indications of character good as far as they go; the criticisms of Tocqueville's writings just and appropriate. But M. Beaumont does not show us the man himself at all; he envelopes him in a veil of vague phrases and general expressions of praise, which leave no idea. behind. He tells us, for instance, that "the striking features of Tocqueville's "political life are firmness combined "with moderation, and moral greatness "combined with ambition." Is not this worthy of Sir Archibald Alison? There is another omission, for which, however, no blame is due to M. Beaumont. The political life of Tocqueville, which began in 1840, and died at the death of French liberty, could necessarily only be sketched with the faintest touches. To have gone into detail with reference to the earlier part would have been, as M. Beaumont says, to revive antagonisms now buried in a common mourning; while a more definite and obvious restraint compels the curtailing of the more recent letters. This forced imperfection in the picture is strongly felt. For, whether in public life or not, Tocqueville was eminently a politician. His patriotism was no intermittent enthusiasm, no latent fire-it was the guiding principle of his whole life. His sole profession was to devote the rare powers of thought that nature had bestowed on him to his country's service. Fortunately this omission has been to a great extent supplied in the English translation, recently published, of M. Beaumont's book. This translation is enriched with several new fragments of correspondence, and some valuable extracts from the journal of Mr. Senior, one of Tocqueville's numerous English friends. Besides filling up the blank we have mentioned, these additions serve another important end; they give us the talk of Tocqueville to compare with his writings. Both are marked by exactly the same traits; the same eager activity of mind; the same energetic originality; that rich fertility in epigrams, which is not uncommon among the countrymen of Voltaire, but which in Tocqueville was kept in perfect restraint, so that the pointed phrase always served to make some truth more clear and impressive. Indeed he might himself have adopted a boast of Voltaire's that he quotes, "Madame, je n'ai jamais fait une phrase de ma vie;" so free and natural are his most piquant sayings. That rare faculty of illustration, that fixes in the memory so many isolated passages in his writings, shows even more exuberantly in his conversation; while the rapidity with which his clear and ready mind seized every new fact, to systematize and generalize, contrasts well with the patient soberness of judgment that kept sifting and examining his first conclusions, till it evolved that calm and lucid exposition of causes and effects which his books contain. The difficulties of translation, in respect of the letters, have been well overcome by the English translator. It is always a bold undertaking to translate French memoirs or correspondence, as the French language is so peculiarly adapted by nature to this kind of composition. And Tocqueville's style is one that brings into play all the resources of his native tongue. The more we examine any of his most careless effusions, the more we are struck with the exactness and subtlety of his expressions we feel the difficulty of altering any of them without spoiling the sense. It must have cost more trouble than appears on the surface to preserve so much of their character in an English dress. : I have said enough to show my admiration for these letters. Indeed they seem to me to bear comparison in most respects with any similar collection, ancient or modern. They bear testimony to the truth of the old saying, "that politeness is but the best expression of true feeling." The warm affection that breathes in them shows beautifully through the dress of delicate compliment, varied by most genial humour, in which it is clothed. M. Beaumont observes on "the immense space that friendship occupied in his life." The same fact will strike every reader of the letters. Tocqueville's heart and mind shared the same restless activity. He could not, therefore, be happy without a wide field of personal relations. It was as impossible for him to rest satisfied with that abstract philanthropy, which, absorbed in plans for the general good, neglects individual ties, as it was to assent to the "modern realism" (as he called it), which ignores all individual rights in behalf of the general utility of society. His hatred of this tendency seems to spring from a one-sided experience, and one may feel it exaggerated; but he calls it himself one of his "central opinions," and it was curiously in harmony with many others of his ways of feeling and thinking. Another thing that strikes one in the correspondence is the perfection with which he adapts both matter and style, apparently without effort, to suit correspondents of the most various opinions, and the most various degrees of intellectual culture. A comparison of the two first séries of letters in the book, those to his two oldest friends, Louis de Kergorlay and Alexis Stoffels, will afford an excellent example of this. At the same time this happy versatility never involves the sacrifice of the smallest tittle of his individual convictions. A sensitive hatred of insincerity is one of the most marked features of his character. "You 'know," he writes to M. de Corcelle, "that I set a particular value on your friendship. . . . I have always found "that you believed what you said, and felt "what you expressed. This alone would "have been enough to distinguish you "from others." The same sentiment recurs in more than one of his letters. He expresses his general feeling on the point in a letter to Madame Swetchine, -warmly, but with his usual avoidance of exaggeration. "I am not one of "those," he writes, "who think all men "false and treacherous. Many people are sincere in important affairs and on great occasions, but scarcely any are "so in the trifles of every day. Scarcely 66 any exhibit their true feelings, but "merely those which they think useful "or popular; scarcely any, in ordinary "conversation, seek and express their "real opinions, instead of searching for "what will sound ingenious or clever. "This is the kind of sincerity which is "rare-particularly, I must say, among women and in drawing-rooms, where 66 even kindness has its artifices." Sincerity, such as he here longs for, was not merely a principle with Tocqueville, it was a necessity. Without it, correspondence would have lost its whole charm for him. There are two or three letters in which he endeavours to smooth away, if possible, the dissent which some opinion of his has evoked. Here we see the eager desire for sympathy combined with the resolution not to modify or disguise his sentiments in the smallest point. In compositions of all kinds, description as well as dissertation, this |