May 2.—­Tocqueville dined with us.

A lady at the table d’hote was full of a sermon which she had heard at the Madeleine.  The preacher said, sinking his voice to an audible whisper, ’I will tell you a secret, but it must go no farther.  There is more religion among the Protestants than with us, they are better acquainted with the Bible, and make more use of their reading:  we have much to learn from them.’

I asked Tocqueville, when we were in our own room, as to the feelings of the religious world in France with respect to heretics.

‘The religious laity,’ he answered, ’have probably little opinion on the subject.  They suppose the heretic to be less favourably situated than themselves, but do not waste much thought upon him.  The ignorant priests of course consign him to perdition.  The better instructed think, like Protestants, that error is dangerous only so far as it influences practice.

’Dr. Bretonneau, at Tours, was one of the best men that I have known, but an unbeliever.  The archbishop tried in his last illness to reconcile him to the Church:  Bretonneau died as he had lived.  But the archbishop, when lamenting to me his death, expressed his own conviction that so excellent a soul could not perish.

’You recollect the duchesse in St.-Simon, who, on the death of a sinner of illustrious race, said, “On me dira ce qu’on voudra, on ne me persuadera pas que Dieu n’y regarde deux fois avant de damner un homme de sa qualite.”  The archbishop’s feeling was the same, only changing qualite into virtue.

‘There is something amusing,’ he continued, ’when, separated as we are from it by such a chasm, we look back on the prejudices of the Ancien Regime.  An old lady once said to me, “I have been reading with great satisfaction the genealogies which prove that Jesus Christ descended from David.  Ca montre que notre Seigneur etait Gentilhomme."’

‘We are somewhat ashamed,’ I said, ’in general of Jewish blood, yet the Levis boast of their descent from the Hebrew Levi.’

‘They are proud of it,’ said Tocqueville, ’because they make themselves out to be cousins of the Blessed Virgin.  They have a picture in which a Duc de Levi stands bareheaded before the Virgin.  “Couvrez-vous donc, mon cousin,” she says.  “C’est pour ma commodite,” he answers.’

The conversation passed to literature.

‘I am glad,’ said Tocqueville, ’to find that, imperfect as my knowledge of English is, I can feel the difference in styles.’

‘I feel strongly,’ I said, ’the difference in French styles in prose, but little in poetry.’

‘The fact is,’ said Tocqueville, ’that the only French poetry, except that of Racine, that is worth reading is the light poetry.  I do not think that I could now read Lamartine, though thirty years ago he delighted me.’

‘The French taste,’ I said, ’in English poetry differs from ours.  You read Ossian and the “Night Thoughts."’