Thy sacred leaves, fair Freedom’s flower,
  Shall ever float on dome and tower,
  To all their heavenly colors true,
  In blackening frost or crimson dew,—­
  And GOD love us as we love thee,
  Thrice holy Flower of Liberty! 
     Then hail the banner of the free,
     The starry FLOWER OF LIBERTY!

ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE.

The memory of Alexis de Tocqueville belongs scarcely less to America than to France.  His book on “Democracy in America” was the foundation of his fame.  As a successful investigation by a foreigner of the nature and working of institutions dissimilar from those of his own country, and in many essential respects different from any which were elsewhere established, it stands quite alone in political literature.  It is still further remarkable as the work of a very young man.  Its merits were at once acknowledged; and though twenty-six years have passed since it appeared, it has been superseded by no later work.  The book has a double character, which has given to it an equal authority on both sides of the Atlantic.  For while it is a profound and sagacious analysis of the spirit and methods of the American social and political system, it is intended at the same time—­more, however, by implied than open comparison—­to exhibit the relations of the principles established here to the development of modern society and government in France and elsewhere in Europe.  It is a manual alike for the political theorist and the practical statesman; and whatever changes our institutions may undergo, its value will remain undiminished.

The volumes of Tocqueville’s Inedited Works and Correspondence, with a Memoir by his friend M. Gustave de Beaumont, which have lately appeared in Paris, have, therefore, a special claim to the attention of American readers.  Their intrinsic interest is great as illustrating the life and character not only of one of the most original and independent thinkers of this generation, but also of a man not less distinguished by the elevation and integrity of his character than by the power of his intellect.  The race of such men has seemed of late years to be dying out in France.  In the long list of her public characters during the past thirty years, there are few names which can share the honor with Tocqueville’s of being those neither of apostates nor of schemers.  Men who hold to their principles in the midst of revolutions, who for the sake of honor resist the temptations of power, who have faith in liberty and in progress even when their hopes are overthrown, are rare at all times and in all lands.  “France no longer produces such men,” said the Duke de Broglie, when he heard of Tocqueville’s death.