I, however, had depended on you for furnishing me with clear ideas of a country which is at present so interesting to Europe, and which I think is destined to play an important part in the future.  And what say you of our friends the Turks?  Was it worth while to spend so much money and to shed so much blood in order to retain in Europe savages who are ill disguised as civilised men?  I am impatient to talk to you, and almost equally so to read you.

I shall have little to tell you.  I have not stirred from home since I left England, and am leading the life of a gentleman-farmer; a life which pleases me more and more every day, and would really make me happy, if my wife were not suffering from an obstinate neuralgic affection in the face.  I fear that she may have to go to some mineral waters, which she would be sorry to do; for, as you know, she hates travelling, and does no justice to the reputation for wandering possessed by the English race.

I can tell you nothing on politics which you will not find in the newspapers.  The great question at present for all civilised Governments seems to be the financial.  The crisis from which America and England are suffering will probably extend everywhere.  As for India, you are out, not perhaps of your difficulties, but of your greatest dangers.  This affair, and that of the Crimea, show how little sympathy there is for England abroad.  There was everything to interest us in your success—­similarity of race, of religion, and of civilisation.  Your loss of India could have served no cause but that of barbarism.  Yet I venture to affirm that the whole Continent, though it detested the cruelties of your enemies, did not wish you to triumph.

Much of this is, without doubt, to be attributed to the evil passions which make men always desire the fall of the prosperous and the strong.  But much belongs to a less dishonourable cause—­to the conviction of all nations that England considers them only with reference to her own greatness; that she has less sympathy than any other modern nation; that she never notices what passes among foreigners, what they think, feel, suffer, or do, but with relation to the use which England can make of their actions, their sufferings, their feelings, or their thoughts; and that when she seems most to care for them she really cares only for herself.  All this is exaggerated, but not without truth.

Kindest regards from us both to you and to Mrs. Senior.

A. DE TOCQUEVILLE.

[Footnote 1:  Mr. Senior was at this time in the East.—­ED.]

Tocqueville, February 10, 1858.

I was delighted, my dear Senior, to receive a letter from you dated Marseilles.  You are right in remaining till the spring in the South.  We trust to meet you in Paris in March.

I say no more, for I cannot write to you on what would most interest you—­French politics.  Much is to be said on them; but you will understand my silence if you study our new Law of Public Safety, and remember who is the new Home Minister.[1] For the first time in French history has such a post been filled by a general—­and what a general!