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Subject Area: Political Theory

TO M. RIVET. - 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 M. RIVET.

Many thanks, my dear friend, for your kind and excellent letter. Always write to me in that way, and believe that nothing which concerns you—affairs, feelings, interests, relations or friends—is indifferent to me. Such is always the case in true friendship. That which I have for you is indeed true, and it is based on the only real foundation, esteem. Of all the men whom I have ever met, you certainly are the one who possesses, in the highest degree, honour and delicacy of feeling, joined with a talent for overcoming or avoiding all the little difficulties created by the opposing passions and interests of men; and this is the real art of living. These qualities, which ought always to go together, co-exist so seldom, that one wonders when one finds them in the same person.

I have nearly finished the preparatory studies of which I spoke to you in one of your visits, and I think that I am now capable of giving a course of lectures on administrative law under the Ancien Régime. The thing to find out now is, what use I can make of these materials, which are useless rubbish if I cannot build with them something new. I shall begin actually to write in about ten days. It is then that I shall ask for your prayers, for then will be decided the formidable question, whether I can turn my future life to any account.

I dare not rely on your promise of coming to visit us in this retreat. All that I can say is, that you will be joyfully welcomed. Adieu.