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Subject Area: Political Theory

TO M. LANJUINAIS. - 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. LANJUINAIS.

Your letter, my dear friend, received yesterday, not only pleased me, but did me good. I was much interested by what you told me about public affairs.

Your letters enable me, as it were, to breathe more freely, by the atmosphere of moral greatness which they unconsciously exhale. You belong, I may say we belong, to a moral and intellectual family, which is disappearing. I am happy when I meet one of its members. I wished to tell you this while my heart was full of it. Such letters as you have written to me, of late, do me real good.

As to my health, I am told that I get on better and better. My strength is, in a great measure, restored; for I walk for an hour at a time, and taking in all my walks, for several hours in the day, and without fatigue. But, without dwelling on these details, you will be satisfied with knowing, that I advance as rapidly as is possible towards complete recovery. It is melancholy to have to add, that, as long as any trace of this strange malady remains, one is sure of nothing. Any accident may throw me back for two or three weeks.

Adieu, my dear friend. This letter is a slight piece of thanks for yours, and for the warm sympathy which is seen through the habitual calmness of your style. Talk of me to Dufaure, who has given me, during the last three months, all sorts of underhand proofs of friendship; to our dear Freslon, and to Rivet.

The loneliness which oppresses me, and sometimes almost wears me down, makes the recollection of these good and noble friends still more dear to me.