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Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow TO W. R. GREG, ESQ. - Memoir, Letters, and Remains of Alexis de Tocqueville, vol. 2

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TO W. R. GREG, ESQ. - Alexis de Tocqueville, Memoir, Letters, and Remains of Alexis de Tocqueville, vol. 2 [1861]

Edition used:

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. In Two Volumes (London: Macamillan, 1861). 2 vols.

Part of: Memoir, Letters, and Remains of Alexis de Tocqueville, 2 vols.

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TO W. R. GREG, ESQ.

I will not wait, Sir, for the arrival of the book* which you have promised me, before thanking you for your kindness in sending it. I am sure that I shall find it both instructive and interesting. I have never read anything of yours, but I have often heard your writings spoken of, and in such terms as make me value beforehand the work that I am expecting.

I regret to have seen so little of you, and that my health was not in a condition to admit of my receiving you as I should have liked. What I already know of you makes me wish most sincerely to know more. I hope to be more fortunate on your next visit, and that you will allow me some long conversations. You will teach me much of which I am still ignorant, with regard to your country, and I will talk to you of mine more clearly and more in detail than I have as yet had the opportunity of doing. All that I will now say is, that of all countries this is the one as to which it is most dangerous to form an opinion by what usually takes place in others, or even by one’s experience of mankind in general. There is something both in our good and in our bad qualities so peculiar, so extraordinary, and so unexpected, that the French themselves are constantly taken by surprise, and strangers can scarcely understand anything about us.

Adieu. Do not forget me on your next visit, and believe that when I say that I am anxious to see you, it is a sincere wish, not a mere compliment.

[*]Essays on Political and Social Science.