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TO M. J. J. AMPÈRE. - 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. J. J. AMPÈRE.

I am just arrived from England, dear friend, and I find your letter of the 26th of June. I do not wonder that you still linger on the shore of the Lake of Como. What a charming study it must make for a man who reads and writes all day out of doors!

I fear that after living in the poetry of nature, you will care little for our prose; the less, as we must expect a wet autumn. We have had the finest of springs and of summers. A cloudless sky, and the centigrade thermometer at 25°. We shall have to pay for it by torrents of rain, which will not spare you. My wife is already miserable about it. But I venture to maintain that you will not be unhappy at Tocqueville, even in the rain; for one can never be thoroughly unhappy where there are true friends to receive one with open arms, and to show deep regret when one goes away.

As I told you, I come from a tour of five weeks in England. I lived in such a vortex, that I could not write to any of my best friends; and as for you, who are at the head of the list, I did not know to what part of Europe to address a letter. Yet I had much to say. My principal object was the British Museum, which contains about 12,000 pamphlets published in France during the Revolution. This collection is larger than any that we have, but for want of a catalogue I could make little use of it. I fared rather better in the State Paper Office, which was opened to me exceptionally.* I read there an interesting correspondence between the English diplomatic agents and their Government during the first year of our Revolution. Though I did not learn as much as I expected during my tour, I was far more amused than I could have hoped. I was almost ashamed of the warmth of my reception; for you know I do not deceive myself as to the real amount of my merits.

We stay here till February. So choose your time, and believe in the delight with which we shall receive you.

[*]The correspondence up to 1789 is all that is usually shown.—Tr.