I see a great deal of Thiers, who is very agreeable and very triste.  ‘L’exil,’ he says, ‘est tres-dur.’  Remusat seems to bear it more patiently.  We hear that we are to have Cousin.

What are your studies in the Bibliotheque Royale?  I have begun to read Bastide, and intend to make the publication of my lectures on Political Economy my principal literary pursuit.  I delivered the last on Monday.

I shall pass the first fifteen days of April in Brussels, with my old friend Count Arrivabene, 7 Boulevard du Regent.

* * * * *

Ever yours,

N.W.  SENIOR.

March 25, 1852.

I send you, my dear Senior, an introduction to Lamoriciere.  This letter will be short:  you know that I do not write at any length by the post.

It will contain nothing but thanks for your long and interesting letter brought by Rivet, who returned delighted with the English in general, and with you in particular.

I see that the disturbed state of politics occasioned by Sir Robert Peel’s policy, is passing away, and that your political world is again dividing itself into the two great sects, one of which tries to narrow, the other to extend, the area of political power—­one of which tries to lift you into aristocracy, the other to depress you into democracy.

The political game will be simpler.  I can understand better the conservative policy of Lord Derby than the democratic one of Lord John Russell.  As the friends of free-trade are more numerous than those of democracy, I think that it would have been easier to attack the Government on its commercial than on its political illiberality.

Then in this great nation, called Europe, similar currents of opinions and feelings prevail, different as may be the institutions and characters of its different populations.  We see over the whole continent so general and so irresistible a reaction against democracy, and even against liberty, that I cannot believe that it will stop short on our side of the Channel; and if the Whigs become Radical, I shall not be surprised at the permanence in England of a Tory Government allied to foreign despots.

But I ought not to talk on such matters, for I live at the bottom of a well, seeing nothing, and regretting that it is not sufficiently closed above to prevent my hearing anything.  Your visions of 25,000 troops at Cherbourg, to be followed by 25,000 more, are mere phantoms.  There is nothing of the kind, and there will be nothing.  I speak with knowledge, for I come from Cherbourg.  I have been attending an extraordinary meeting of our Conseil general on the subject of a projected railway.  My reception touched and delighted me.  I was unanimously, and certainly freely, elected president.

* * * * *

A. DE TOCQUEVILLE.

Friday evening, April 17, 1852.

My dear Tocqueville,—­My letter is not likely to be a very amusing one, for I begin it on the dullest occasion and in the dullest of towns, namely at Ostend, while waiting for the packet-boat which is to take me to London.