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TO MRS. AUSTIN. - 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 MRS. AUSTIN.

Your letter, Madame, which I received yesterday, gave us great pleasure, by proving to us how much better your health must have become, as you are able to travel. Madame de Tocqueville and I are heartily glad of this improvement. I wish I could pay you a visit, but I do not know if it will be possible, for we are farther apart than you seem to think, although we are in the same province. Trouville is more than a hundred miles off, and there is no railway. . . .

I owed to you last summer, Madame, much enjoyment and instruction. I was on the Rhine when your book upon Germany* was lent to me. I read it with great interest, and I learnt from it many things which were new to me.

I have lately been studying Germany, and for this purpose I commenced an undertaking which was anything but reasonable at my age—I began to learn German. Though I have not learnt to speak it, I can understand it and read it. Thus I was a better judge of the truth of your descriptions, and the exactness of your views.

Good bye, Madame. Remember me particularly to Mr. Austin and to Mrs. Reeve, whom I should like very much to see again, and to thank for her kind hospitality twenty years ago, at Hampstead.

[*]“Germany from 1760 to 1814, from the decay of the Empire to the expulsion of the French.” 1 vol. 8vo. 1854.