The first floor corresponds to the ground floor, except that on the western sides a passage runs, into which the library, which is over the drawing-room, and the bedrooms open.  The second consists of garrets.  My room is on the first floor of the eastern tower, with deep windows looking south and east.  The room dedicated by Tocqueville to Ampere is above me.  Creepers in great luxuriance cover the walls up to the first floor windows.  The little park consists of from thirty to forty acres, well wooded and traversed by an avenue in this form, leading from the road to the front of the house.

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To the west the ground rises to a wild common commanding the sea, the lighthouses of Gatteville, Barfleur, La Hogue, and a green plain covered with woods and hedgerow trees, and studded with church towers and spires of the picturesque forms of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries.  It has no grand features, except the sea and the rocky coast of the Cherbourg peninsula, but it is full of variety and beauty.  I can understand Tocqueville’s delight in the house and in the country.  The weather is perfect; the thermometer in my bedroom, the walls of which are about six feet thick, is 71 deg., in the sun it is 80 deg.; but there is a strong breeze.

August 12th.—­Madame de Beaumont, my daughter, and Ampere drove, and Beaumont and I walked, to the coast about three miles and a half off.  Our road ran through the gay wooded plain which I have described.

We talked of Italian affairs.

‘Up to the annexation of Tuscany,’ said Beaumont, ’I fully approve of all that has been done.  Parma, Modena, and Tuscany were eager to join Piedmont.  During the anxious interval of six months, while the decision of Louis Napoleon was doubtful, the conduct of the Tuscans was above all praise.  Perhaps the general wish of the people of Romagna justified the Piedmontese in seizing it.  Though there the difficult question as to the expediency of stripping the Pope of his temporal power rises.

’Perhaps, too, the facility with which Sicily submitted was a justification.  But I cannot pardon the seizure of Naples.  It is clear to me that if the Neapolitans had been left to themselves they would have driven out the Garibaldians.  Garibaldi himself felt this:  nothing but a conviction of its necessity would have induced him to call for the assistance of the Piedmontese.  I do not believe that in defiance of all international law-indeed in defiance of all international morality—­Cavour would have given that assistance if the public opinion of Piedmont had allowed him to refuse it.  And what is the consequence?  A civil war which is laying waste the country.  The Piedmontese call their adversaries brigands.  There are without doubt among them men whose motive is plunder, but