If you could write or dictate a few lines to me, you would please me much.

I am inconsolable for the failure of your American journey.  I expected the most curious results from it I hoped that your journal would enable me once more to understand the present state of a country which has so changed since I saw it that I feel that I now know nothing of it.  What a blessing, however, that you had not started!  What would have become of you if the painful attack from which you are suffering had seized you 2,000 miles away from home, and in the midst of that agitated society where no one has time to be ill or to think of those who are ill?  It must be owned that Fortune has favoured you by sending you this illness just at the moment of your departure instead of ten days later.

I have been much interested by your visit to Sir John Boileau.  You saw there M. Guizot in one of his best lights.  The energy with which he stands up under the pressure of age and of ill-fortune, and is not only resigned in his new situation, but as vigorous, as animated, and as cheerful as ever, shows a character admirably tempered and a pride which nothing will bend.

I do not so well understand the cheerfulness of Lord John Russell.  For the spectacle now exhibited by England, in which a party finds no difficulty in maintaining itself in power by carrying into practice ideas which it has always opposed, and by relying for support on its natural enemies, is not of a nature to raise the reputation of your institutions, or of your public men.  I should have a great deal more to say to you on this and other subjects if I were not afraid of tiring you.  I leave off, therefore, by assuring you that we are longing to hear of your recovery.  Remembrances, &c.

A. DE TOCQUEVILLE.

Cannes, December 12, 1858.

I wish, my dear friend, to reassure you myself on the false reports which have been spread regarding my health.  Far from finding myself worse than when we arrived, I am already much better.

I am just now an invalid who takes his daily walks of two hours in the mountains after eating an excellent breakfast.  I am not, however, well.  If I were I should not long remain a citizen of Cannes.

I have almost renounced the use of speech, and consequently the society of human beings; which is all the more sad as my wife, my sole companion, is herself very unwell, not dangerously, but enough to make me anxious.  When I say my sole companion, I am wrong, for my eldest brother has had the kindness to shut himself up with us for a month.

Adieu, dear Senior.  A thousand kind remembrances from us to all your party.

A. DE TOCQUEVILLE.

Cannes, March 15, 1859.

You say, my dear Senior, in the letter which I have just received, that I like to hear from my friends, not to write to them.  It is true that I delight in the letters of my friends, especially of my English friends; but it is a calumny to say that I do not like to answer them.  It is true that I am in your debt:  one great cause is, that a man who lives at Cannes knows nothing of what is passing.  My solitary confinement, which is bad enough in every way, makes me a bad correspondent, by depressing my spirits and rendering every exertion painful.