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TO M. DE CIRCOURT. - 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. DE CIRCOURT.

My dear M. de Circourt,

I direct to you at Bougival, hoping that my letter will find you or follow you. I have been anxious to thank you for having found time, while living among the chamois, to write to me such interesting letters. They breathe the elasticity of mind and body which mountain air gives to those who enjoy the happiness of health. It has not been mine for some months.

The approach of our fêtes has driven this country half wild. As the railway is opened, and a line of packets between Cherbourg and Weymouth has been established, it seems that all France and England will meet in our little corner. You will easily believe that the general enthusiasm has not reached me. I always detested official joy, even under the governments that I liked best. The only part of the spectacle which will lead me to Cherbourg is the sight of the combined French and English fleets. It will be a grand picture, but I shall see it with the pain with which, on the 20th of May, 1848, I saw the review of more than 100,000 National Guards, in the Champs de Mars. “Alas!” I said to myself as I returned; “we have been reviewing two armies which will soon be fighting in the streets of Paris.” So it was, as you know. God grant that it may not be so this time.

While England, however, has her present work to do in India, she is not to be feared. I think her situation more formidable and more difficult now, than it was the day after the insurrection. I have long thought that at the bottom of all that is going on in the East there is a new and general fact—a universal rising against the European. Will it succeed? I hope not. I believe that we have too much the start of our opponents. But of the existence of this fact, and of its being the cause of many effects that we see, I have no doubt.