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TO M. FRESLON. - 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. FRESLON.

I should have thanked you sooner, my dear friend, for two most agreeable letters, if I had not been suffering for the last fortnight under a return of influenza. This little disorder attacked me slightly six weeks ago. I returned to my ordinary habits before I had quite got rid of it. An imprudent exposure to the icy winds which have afflicted our coast during the last three weeks, caused a relapse not serious, for I had no fever, but bad enough to make me very unwell, and it still forces me to remain at home, to my extreme disgust, for I had become a denizen, not indeed of the forest, but of the meadow and the fallow.

You cannot conceive the awful magnificence of an equinoctial north-easter on our coasts. All nature is convulsed, the strongest dwellings shake, and great birds are seen pursuing their terrified flight through the heavens. When I am well this spectacle gives me passionate delight. Now it seems to me melancholy. I had rather talk to you in the prosaic streets of Paris than live in the poetry of this maddened atmosphere; and I really want to be in Paris for my work. But till the weather is better, and I am well, I cannot start. Still I trust to be with you before the end of the month. I am tired not only of imprisonment, but of idleness. I have no materials to go on with

Without your interesting letters, and the newspapers, I should know nothing of what is going on. You are quite right in admiring Washington, and putting him in the foremost rank of mankind. It shows, what indeed I well knew, that you understand and love real greatness and real glory. Of how many of my countrymen or contemporaries could I say this? Washington is the product of the society and of the times he lived in. We should have thought him flat. We want theatrical virtues, fine speeches, brilliant vices, even audacious ones are enough.

Adieu. Write to me for friendship’s sake, and for charity’s sake.