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Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow TO MADAME SWETCHINE. - Memoir, Letters, and Remains of Alexis de Tocqueville, vol. 2

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TO MADAME SWETCHINE. - 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 MADAME SWETCHINE.

Allow me, Madame, to begin by thanking you for your last letter. The kind feeling which it expressed comforted and strengthened me. Your letters have always this effect. The great reason is, I think, that your temperament is easily excited, while your mind is regulated by fixed principles. To these causes you owe your charm and your influence. I wish that I could derive more benefit than I do from such a valuable friendship, and I lament my want of success. Since I last wrote I have, however, regained some of the calm which I had lost towards the end of my stay in Paris, and during the first part of my return hither; but as yet I can take a lively interest in nothing. No book, nor even employment, has any hold upon me; a state in which I am always restless. For tranquillity with me arises not from repose, but from an active intellectual effort towards a definite point.

. . . . I hope that this letter will find you in your retreat, whither I should so much like to follow you, were it only for a single day, in order to enjoy with you long conversations, uninterrupted, as in Paris, by visitors.

The life so devoted to others which you lead there, though it procures for you the great happiness of doing good, must in the long run be trying to your health, and I rejoice in the idea of your solitude. Enjoy it, Madame, at your ease, and think of others only to remember the strong affection which some, and the esteem which all, entertain for you.

I have been reading a book which has much interested me. Albert de Broglie’s “Church and Empire of Rome in the Fourth Century.” I think it very clever. Though sincerely religious, the author has a sufficiently liberal spirit to admit of his judging impartially the men whom God used as His instruments. The whole style and arrangement of the book seemed to me very good. The decay of the Roman Empire always inspired me with disgust, and the Prince de Broglie’s is the first work that has ever interested me on the subject. . . .