You will find them materials for some of those excellent and interesting articles which you write so well. When you come I shall be able to give you some useful information, for I have devoted much attention to Algiers. I have here a long report which I drew up for the Chamber in 1846, which may give you some valuable ideas, though things have considerably changed since that time.
Kind remembrances, &c.,
A. DE TOCQUEVILLE.
[The following are some more of Mrs. Grote's interesting notes. She preceded Mr. Senior at St. Cyr.—ED.]
The notes relating to St. Cyr are memoranda of various conversations which I enjoyed during a stay of some ten days or so at Tours, in February 1854, with Monsieur Alexis de Tocqueville. I occupied an apartment in the hotel at Tours, and on almost every day passed some hours in the company of this interesting friend, who at this time lived at St. Cyr, in a commodious country-house having its garden, &c, which he rented. I drove out to dine there frequently, and M. de Tocqueville walked over on the intervening days and stayed an hour or two at the hotel with me talking incessantly.—H.G.
St. Cyr, February 13, 1854,—The French allow no author to have a claim to the highest rank unless he joins the perfection of style with the instructiveness of his matter. Only four first-rate writers in the eighteenth century—grands écrivains, comme grands penseurs originaux; these being Montesquieu, Voltaire, J.J. Rousseau, and Buffon. Helvetius not en première ligne, because his forme was not up to the mark. Alexis himself is often hung up for days together, having the thoughts, yet not hitting off the 'phrases' in a way to satisfy his critical ear as to style.
Thinks that when a man is capable of originating a belle pensée, he ought to be also capable of clothing that thought in felicitous language.
Thinks that a torpid state of political life is unfavourable to intellectual product in general.
I instanced the case of Louis XIV. as contradicting this. Not admitted by Tocqueville. The civil wars of Louis XIV.'s reign had engendered considerable activity in the minds of the educated class. This activity generated speculation and scientific inquiry in all the departments of human thoughts. Abstract ideas became the field on which thinkers occupied themselves. No practical outlet under despotism, but a certain social fermentation nevertheless existing, and the want of making itself a vent impelled intellectual life and writings. I instanced Louis XV. 'At least,' I said, 'the torpor of political life was become yet more a habit,' 'Yes,' said Alexis, 'but then there was the principle of discontent very widely diffused, which was the germ of the revolution of 1789. This restless, disaffected state of the national mind gave birth to some new forms of intellectual product, tending to rather more distinct practical results, which filtered down among the middle classes, and became the objects of their desires and projects.' Rousseau and Voltaire eminently serviceable in leading the public sentiment towards the middle of the eighteenth century.
English writers and statesmen having always enjoyed the power of applying their minds to actual circumstances, and of appealing through a free press and free speech also to the public of their day, have never addressed themselves, as French philosophers did, to the cultivation of abstract speculations and general theories. Here and there a writer has been thrown, by his individual tastes and turn of thought, upon the study of political philosophy; but the Englishman, taken as a public writer, commonly addresses himself to practical legislation rather than to recondite studies or logical analysis and investigation of the relations between mankind and their regulations under authorised powers. Since Lord Bacon there have been few, excepting in our later times Mill, Bentham, and his disciples, who have explored the metaphysics of jurisprudence and moral science in England. Hume dealt in the philosophic treatment of political subjects, but did not work them up into anything like a coherent system. English are not fond of generalities, but get on by their instincts, bit by bit, as need arises.