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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 write to you, my dear friend, with no object, except to tell you our news, and to ask for yours. Not that I am anxious about you. You seem to me to be plunged in all the delights of Capua, except that you do not let them enervate you. To live with friends in a pretty villa in Upper Italy, and write in view of the Lake of Como and the Alps, is a most luxurious manner of working.

We well understand the difficulty of dragging you from this retreat to our Hyperborean country, and we make only two conditions. One, that you come before the end of September, that you may not jump suddenly from your summer to our winter; the other, that you do not run away too soon. I am trying to induce the Loménies to meet you. We have endeavoured by every means to persuade them to come, and I trust that we shall succeed.

I am not yet writing steadily, but I hope that I am getting into the humour, and that I shall also work efficiently. I judge from the disquiet and uneasiness which my barrenness gives to me, and from my anxiety, vague, but eager, to be again productive.

I want to get the machine in motion. Yours is always at work. I would to God that I resembled you. Nothing is more capricious or restive than my mind, and, unfortunately, I cannot say to it, as Turenne did to his body, “You tremble, carcass, but I shall take you into places which you will like still less.” I am very impatient to see your Cæsar with its last embellishments, to know what is the book which you allude to without telling me what it is like, and above all to embrace you, and to talk to you about everything.

India employs all our thoughts here, and, I suppose, everywhere; for no man under the sun can be indifferent to events which affect so much the destinies of the human race. I expect England to triumph, and to regain her empire. In the meantime she is in the state of a lobster changing its shell. At every other time it is invulnerable—at that instant the smallest fish may wound it. England has not merely to reconquer India, she must change its form of government; and while she is doing so, she must be at peace everywhere else. I foresee, therefore, as one of the first consequences, a greater warmth of friendship between her cabinet and ours. Her respect for our Government will return in proportion as she wants us.