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TO M. GUSTAVE DE BEAUMONT. - 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. GUSTAVE DE BEAUMONT.

. . . As soon as my father leaves us, I intend to follow your advice, and set myself hard and seriously to work. . . . I tremble when I think how necessary it is for me to succeed. I really do not know what would become of me if I lost this my only occupation. I am like the poor, who, reduced in ordinary times to live upon potatoes, must die in a scarcity.

I shall soon send you back the “Memoirs of Frederick the Great,” which I have read, taking care not to displace your marks. It is certainly a remarkable book, but much less so than its author. How different is the quality of mind which makes men act, from that which enables them to write! The thought which concentrates itself within the limits of an act to be accomplished from that which extends over a large area and endeavours to judge events and their causes! How possible it is for the same man to be first-rate in the former, and common-place in the latter capacity, and vice versâ! I never saw this so clearly before. In his memoirs, too, Frederick talks of nothing but battles, about which I know nothing. What I want to know is, how Frederick managed his government, and what were his opinions on the subject of government; but I suspect that he thought this part of his life too unimportant to take the trouble to explain it. I am struck by the short-sightedness of men, even of great men. I do not find in Frederick’s works a single word which denotes that he anticipated the revolutions which were then about to change the face of Europe. His own language and his own ideas show that the Revolution was coming, but he saw nothing of it. Is it not strange, that our wretched Louis XV. saw from his dung-heap what Frederick, enlightened by all his genius, could not perceive. . . .