I must say that America is a puer robustus.  Yet I cannot desire, as many persons do, its dismemberment.  Such an event would inflict a great wound on the whole human race; for it would introduce war into a great continent from whence it has been banished for more than a century.

The breaking up of the American Union will be a solemn moment in the history of the world.  I never met an American who did not feel this, and I believe that it will not be rashly or easily undertaken.  There will, before actual rupture, be always a last interval, in which one or both parties will draw back.  Has not this occurred twice?

Adieu, dear Senior.  Do not be long without letting us hear from you, and remember us affectionately to Mrs. Senior and to your daughter.

Ashton House, near Phoenix Park, Dublin, September 26, 1856.

My dear Tocqueville,—­Your letter found me at Haddo House, Aberdeenshire, where we have been spending a fortnight with Lord Aberdeen.

It has been very interesting.  Lord Aberdeen is one of our wisest statesmen.

* * * * *

I found Lord Aberdeen deprecating the war, notwithstanding its success, utterly incredulous as to the aggressive intentions attributed to Nicholas, and in fact throwing the blame of the war on Lord Stratford and, to a certain degree, on Louis Napoleon.

I found him also much disturbed by our Naples demonstration, believing it to be an unwarranted interference with an independent Government.

* * * * *

Ever yours,

A.W.  SENIOR.

Tocqueville, November 2, 1856.

I am grateful to you, my dear Senior, for your kindness in telling me what I most wished to hear.  The judgments of such men as those with whom you have been living, while they delight me, impose on me the duty of unrelaxed efforts.

Your fortnight at Lord Aberdeen’s amused me exceedingly, and not the least amusing part were the eccentricities of A.B.

There is one point in which the English seem to me to differ from ourselves, and, indeed, from all other nations, so widely that they form almost a distinct species of men.  There is often scarcely any connection between what they say and what they do.

No people carry so far, especially when speaking in public, violence of language, outrageousness of theories, and extravagance in the inference drawn from those theories.  Thus your A.B. says that the Irish have not shot half enough landlords.  Yet no people act with more moderation.  A quarter of what is said in England at a public meeting, or even round a dinner-table, without anything being done or intended to be done, would in France announce violence, which would almost always be more furious than the language had been.

We Frenchmen are not so different from our antipodes as we are from a nation, partly our own progeny, which is separated from us by only a large ditch.