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TO THE COMTE DE CIRCOURT. - 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 THE COMTE DE CIRCOURT.

I was extremely sorry, dear M. de Circourt, to hear of the sad event which forced you to set off for Franche-Comté almost immediately after your return from your long journey in the South of France.

I brought with me from Paris, and I have nearly finished—I say nearly, for such a book is a serious undertaking—one that I think you recommended to me, Haxthausen, on the agricultural classes in Russia. Nothing can be more wearisome nor more instructive. The author, without having much talent, is an honest witness, who has had the good sense to consider the only thing in Russia which is at all interesting or has any dignity, and the only one that nobody goes to see—the Russian lower classes. I found in his book a mass of facts about which I knew nothing, and which seem to me to throw much light on a little known part of Europe—if, indeed, it can be called Europe. I do not wish to abuse Russia to you, for you have an excellent reason for thinking well of that country;* therefore I shall confine myself to saying, that I never felt less inclined to take up my abode in the Empire of the Czars than after reading Haxthausen. Ennui would make it intolerable—ennui breathes in every description of it. Monotony, even in liberty, is tiresome; what must it be in slavery? What must be those villages exactly alike, with inhabitants exactly alike, employed in exactly the same way, with minds all equally asleep? I own to you, in confidence, that I should prefer barbarism in all its disorder.

Just as I had finished writing to Madame de Circourt the other day, I received from her the kindest and most friendly letter conceivable. I should have written to her again on the spot to thank her for it, if I had not feared to inflict too much of myself upon her by sending another despatch so soon.

[*]Madame de Circourt is Russian.—Tr.