analogies lie on the surface; there are at the bottom immense differences, and this among the rest, which is enough: We are asleep, the Romans were dead; beyond that horizon on which our eyes are fixed, there is something infinitely better than that which we see. I have the conviction that our society is fatigued, exhausted if you will, but not decrepit; it is sick, but it has a strong constitution; Christianity, modern light, the latent energy which shows itself at every instant, the absence of slavery, the ties of country, all differ from Rome. No, in our future there is something very different from the Rome of the Cæsars; and because I do not see the new day which will rise, I am no believer in darkness." These are noble words, which Frenchmen may read and take to heart for their comfort. It is curious in such a man, but consistent with our experience, that while he judged thus accurately of his own country and of the Continent, he was for a long time unable to understand England. His first impressions, which he records in his letters, were the usual views of Frenchmen. He thought we were crushed by a proud aristocracy, that our people were depressed and discontented, and that we were marching at a gallop to a revolution. After his intimacy with many distinguished Englishmen, and his closer intercourse with the country of which his wife was a native, he adopted different views. They are recorded in a letter to a friend in the end of July 1857, when he had revisited England, with his mind matured by study and observation, and with that penetration which springs from experience and affection. "England is," he says, " the greatest spectacle that you will find in the world. You there meet with things entirely unknown in the rest of Europe, the sight of which has refreshed me. I doubt not that there exists in the lower classes a certain amount of feeling hostile to the classes above them ; but you do not see this. What you do see is the union and cordial good understanding amongst all men who form a part of the enlightened classes, from the burgess up to the heights of the aristocracy, all united to defend society, and to conduct it freely and in common. I did not envy England its wealth and its power, but I envied it this; and I breathed anew when I found myself for the first time for many years outside these hatreds and rivalries of classes, which, after having been the source of all our miseries, have ended by destroying our freedom."

There are some other remarks of his upon England, which we commend to our readers. He had observed with his usual discernment our blunders in the Crimea, and he traced these accurately to the want of centralized power. Our isolation from the Continent, and the little sympathy felt for us there, both in our Russian war and in the Indian revolt, he refers partly to the envy which other nations naturally feel at such greatness and prosperity as ours, but partly to the conviction

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(which we do not believe to be just, but which we admit to be general) that England, in all her politics, is looking exclusively to her own interests, and cares about foreign affairs only in as far as they affect her own fortunes. His remarks upon our dealings with India well deserve attention, and we wish they could be impressed, not on the Christian world, which has long admitted them, but on statesmen. His remarks deserve the more weight, inasmuch as he had made the history of the establishment of the English in India a subject of special attention. "I avow to you," he says to Lord Hatherton, "that there remained with me from this study the reflection that the English had not done for the Indian population what might have been expected from their lights and their institutions. It seemed to me that in general they were satisfied with putting themselves in the place of native governments, and of employing the same means, only with more equity, gentleness, and intelligence. I think one had a right to expect better things of them."

If we apply this to our dealings with Indian religion and education, how instructive is the remark. We notice another. He is commenting on an article on India in the Edinburgh Review, by Mr. Reeve. The editor had suggested the advantage of introducing into India a European population. "That," says De Tocqueville, "would be full of danger; for wherever you introduce such a population into the heart of races imperfectly civilized, the superiority of the first over the second will make itself felt in a manner so offensive to individual interests, and so mortifying to the national pride, that more resentment will arise from it than from any political oppression." How instructively does this sagacious remark throw light upon the late disturbances in Bengal, the acts of the indigo planters, and the resentment of the ryots!

But we must not allow ourselves further quotations. It was a characteristic of that balanced mind, that he noticed the feature in England so contrasted with that of France and of Germany, that while in the latter countries religious men supported and upheld despotism, in England there was a perfect agreement between religion and liberty, between the religious world and the political; all men valuing free institutions, as not only necessary to the progress, but to the morality of society.

The work in which he was engaged, and of which we have only one volume, was from 1852 the occupation of his later years. He resided, when his health permitted it, almost entirely at his old château of Tocqueville, which he had made sufficiently comfortable for himself and his friends, and where he carried on the improvements in his grounds which his wife's English taste suggested, and in which he found a pleasant

recreation from his studies. In his letter to Lord Hatherton, whom he had visited in England, and with whom he had talked upon agriculture, he gives us a lively sketch of his domestic habits. "Our habits," he says, "in the country are a little different from yours: in the summer we receive our friends, the winter we give up to seclusion. My daily life is then divided into two equal parts; before mid-day I am a writer, after midday a peasant." He wrote laboriously, for he made a large collection of facts from the public libraries or archives which he consulted; and all these notes were written in his own hand. When he came to reduce them to maxims, and condensed their results in his pointed style, he wrote with labour, and could hardly satisfy himself. At times, absorbed and embarrassed by his subject, he could hardly see his way; and then it was that he had recourse to the perspicacity of his relation and friend, the Count de Kergolay, whose clear mind extricated him from his difficulties. Still, even when brought face to face with his subject, he wrote slowly. He speaks of the anxiety which it cost him; of his rising at five o'clock in the morning, and passing six hours looking at the paper which often remained a blank, going out of his room overcome by his work and dissatisfied with himself. It was then that his country life and its habits came to his assistance. He says: "My books never make me forget my fields, while these often distract my thoughts when I am in the midst of my work. The evening finds my wife and myself gathered before a huge old chimney, before which my ancestors have sat, and where a bright fire is blazing. We read together the books which please us the most, and time

flies."

Writing to another friend in January, he says:-"We tear ourselves with difficulty from this place. We have led in our solitude a pleasant life: I indeed have been more idle than I have been for twenty years; for we have had, and still have, an army of workmen engaged in transforming the garden behind the château. The overlooking this regiment has been one of the causes of my intellectual inactivity.'

But this life of various interest was now drawing to its close. The constitution of De Tocqueville had always been delicate, and the short pressure of official business had compelled him to seek a retreat in a milder climate. Symptoms had then appeared which had alarmed both his physician and his friends; but the winters passed at Sorrento and in Touraine had apparently arrested the mischief. It would have been necessary, however, to have continued these precautions, and to have exchanged the harsh and stormy climate of his favourite Normandy every autumn for that of the South. But he was very unwilling to tear himself from his home, which he found so attractive even in winter, and to abandon the books which he

required for his pursuit, and to stop researches into records which could only be carried on in the capital. It was in vain that Madame de Tocqueville intreated him; her influence, powerful on other occasions, failed here. It was evident in 1857, that his constitution was giving way; and his visit to England during that summer, though it was full of intense interest, brought upon him an excitement not favourable to health. In the month of June, 1858, the rupture of a bloodvessel showed that the lungs were affected, and his preparations for leaving Tocqueville were so procrastinated, that it was the end of October before he reached Paris on his way to the South; and it was the beginning of November before he arrived, feeble and exhausted, in the milder climate of Cannes. From that time till the 16th of April, 1859, when he sunk at the age of fifty-four, his life was one rapid decline. He was, indeed, solaced by the tender care of his wife, and the presence of his intimate friends, and he found consolation in the visits and words of the venerable Curé of Cannes. The parish church of Tocqueville received his remains, which were placed there amid the tears of the peasantry, who had become warmly attached to him; and a simple cross of wood, according to his humble wishes, marks the place where so much fame and genius repose. It was said by two eminent men, after reading his first work, that there had been nothing published like it since the days of Montesquieu; and that judgment, pronounced by M. Royer Collard and by M. de Barante, was confirmed at his death in the words of the Duc de Broglie, "France no longer produces men like him;" but we hope, as he hoped, that after a temporary eclipse, genius and talent, with freedom, will once more reappear in France.

ON THE PERMANENT AUTHORITY OF THE DECALOGUE.

EVERY one must have observed how often the controversies of a former age, after having been apparently settled and sunk in repose, rise up again in another, and again become the subjects of eager and earnest discussion. Among these we may reckon the question respecting the Decalogue: whether it is of permanent and universal authority, or whether it is a code of laws drawn up solely for the Jewish dispensation, and therefore superseded by the law now laid down by Christ and His apostles. This latter notion has recently waked up from a long sleep, is widely and actively circulated, and seems to be gaining many adherents. The practical result claimed, and indeed necessarily

following from it, is, that whatever law we may find in the two tables, which is not also expressly laid down in the New Testament, ought to be looked upon as obsolete, and no longer in force.

The main argument in support of this view seems fully and fairly stated in the assertion brought forward by many, and among others by Dr. Hessey, in his late work on the Sabbath, and which in substance is this, that "we are never told to keep any one of the ten commandments merely because we find it written in the Decalogue. Such a reason is never given for our reception of any of them; and therefore we are bound only by those among them which have been republished by Christ, or, being written in the natural heart of man, are therefore evident from the light of nature, and the internal conscience implanted by God."

Now this statement is very plain and straight-forward. It appeals to fact, and not to argument. It is to be proved or disproved by evidence, and not by reasoning.

If, then, we deny the truth of the statement, we must be prepared to answer this question, Can you produce any instance from the New Testament, where we are required to observe any one of the Ten Commandments, merely because it is found in the Decalogue? Can you show that any of the apostles, upon finding a commandment there written, considered that circumstance alone sufficient reason for declaring it still to hold good under the Christian dispensation?

In answer to this, we produce the tenth Commandment, as exactly satisfying the condition required of us. And we may first observe of this Commandment, that it is not one written in the heart and internal conscience, at least if the opinion of St. Paul has any weight with us; for he says that he should not have known coveting to be a sin, if the law had not declared it to be such. His words are, "I had not known sin but by the law; for I had not known lust except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet." (Rom. vii. 7.) But what we are chiefly concerned in is this: St. Paul finds it so written in the Decalogue, for that is evidently the law to which he refers; and he lays it down as certainly binding on us, because it is there written. He does not profess to lay it down on his own authority, or as being republished by Christ, or any other inspired teacher. We cannot read the passage without seeing that the sole authority to which he appeals is the Decalogue itself; and it is evident that he considers the mere fact of the Commandment being there written, sufficient reason and warrant for our receiving it. Here, then, is a clear proof that it cannot truly be said that "we are never told in the New Testament to observe any one of the Commandments merely because we find it written in the Decalogue."