of public events. Of the transactions immediately preceding the coup d'état of December, 1851, however, we have a very clear and animated account in a letter addressed by him to the London Times a few days afterward. During the whole spring and summer he had seen the approaching storm, and his mind had been greatly agitated by it. "The responsibility of absence in political times," he wrote from Sorrento, in March, to a former colleague, "seems to me heavier than the responsibility of action." Two months later he said: "The constitution, bad as it is, is our only bulwark. Nothing else stands between us and either anarchy or despotism." A fortnight later, in speaking of the revision of the constitution, which in the stress of the times he felt obliged to advocate, he said: "So clearly do I see the dangers of the revision, that I could not bring myself to vote for it, if I saw any other less dangerous course." And finally, less than a week before the coup d'état he wrote, in reference to the busy yet peaceful months which he had passed on the shore of the Bay of Naples: "That delicious and tranquil retreat, coming as it did between the Revolution of 1848 and the one which is impending, was like a rest upon some Southern isle between two shipwrecks."

At length the blow fell, and the French Republic ceased to be. The Legislative Assembly had struggled courageously but vainly in behalf of the cause of free institutions, and against the growing power of Louis Napoleon, when on the 2d of December they took the last fatal step, which was instantly followed by their overthrow. On that morning the members learned that several of their colleagues and political friends, including Thiers, Changarnier, Cavaignac, and Lamoricière, had already been arrested, and on attempting to enter their usual place of assembly they were driven back at the point of the bayonet. From this place a considerable number proceeded to the Mairie of the tenth arrondissement, where they immediately organized, and voted a decree to the effect, that "Louis Napoleon Bonaparte is deprived of all authority as President of the Republic. The citizens are enjoined to withhold their obedience. The executive power has passed in full right to the National Assembly. The

Judges of the High Court of Justice are enjoined to meet immediately, under pain of forfeiture, to proceed to the judgment of the President and his accomplices; consequently, all the officers and functionaries of power and of public authority are bound to obey all requisitions made in the name of the National Assembly, under pain of forfeiture and of high treason." The decree was signed by the officers and representatives to the number of two hundred and thirty, among whom were Odillon Barrot, Gustave de Beaumont, Berryer, De Broglie, Rémusat, and De Tocqueville. They were all of them shortly afterward arrested on the spot, and marched off to the barracks on the Quai d'Orsay, from which they were transferred, "some to the fortress of Mont Valerien, some to the Prison Mazas in Paris, and the remainder to Vincennes." De Tocqueville's imprisonment was only of short duration, but with it his political life terminated forever.

After his release he withdrew to his estate in the northwestern corner of France, and there, with the exception of several visits to Paris and some other journeys, most of his time was passed in superintending the improvements on his land and his buildings, and in literary avocations. Even before the coup d'état he had meditated writing a second book, and as early as January, 1851, he intimated to De Beaumont his belief that his fame must ultimately rest on his works, rather than on his career as a statesman. "I have long, as you know," he writes, "been engrossed with the thought of undertaking another book. It has occurred to me a hundred times, that, if I am to leave any traces of my passage through the world, it will be far more by my writings than by my actions. Besides, I feel myself more capable of writing a book now than I was fifteen years ago. I have, therefore, employed my thoughts, in my walks over the hills round Sorrento, in search of a subject." When he could no longer take part in political discussions and the various duties of public life, he naturally reverted to this plan in order to seek relief from the depressing thoughts by which his mind was far too much occupied. With but little hesitation he selected for his subject the French Revolution, not, indeed, with any purpose of writing a history, but rather with a view

of showing the true character of the Revolution, of unfolding the causes in which it originated, and of describing exactly what changes it wrought in the condition of France; and he soon set about his task with as much activity and zeal as the state of his health and spirits would permit. He made large and exhaustive researches in the provincial archives and at Paris, gathering much new and precious material for his work; and in order to fit himself still better for his undertaking he began, at the age of forty-eight, to study German, of which he was entirely ignorant. The work which he proposed to write would probably have extended to three volumes, and was never completed; but in 1856 he published the first part, under the title of L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution, and De Beaumont has printed with his Memoir two short chapters on the state of France before the Consulate, which had been written out for the continuation.

De Tocqueville's second book is only a fragment of a much more voluminous work which he had planned, but had scarcely begun to execute, and any attempt to characterize it in general terms must therefore be imperfect. We ought, however, to bear testimony to the amplitude of research, the clearness of statement, and the freedom from partisanship by which it is every where marked, as well as to its many graces of style. The special object of the first part was, as he tells us in the Preliminary Notice, "to explain why the great Revolution, which was in preparation at the same time over almost the whole continent of Europe, broke out in France sooner than elsewhere; why it sprang spontaneously from the society which it was about to destroy; and lastly, how the old French monarchy came to fall so completely and so abruptly.” After a preliminary discussion as to the general character of the Revolution, which, he contends, was not primarily designed to destroy the authority of religious belief and to weaken political power, but to substitute for the feudal institutions of the Middle Age" a more uniform and simple state of society and politics, based upon an equality of social condition," he proceeds to show that administrative centralization existed in France before the Revolution of 1789, and that in no other country had the metropolis gained so great a preponderance

over the provinces; that nowhere else had men become so much alike, while at the same time they had never before been broken up into so many hostile groups and classes; that in some respects the condition of the French peasantry was worse in the eighteenth century than it had been in the thirteenth ; that irreligion prevailed widely; that the French aimed to reform rather than to revolutionize; and that the very attempt to correct existing abuses hastened the Revolution. Such, in a few words, are the chief points in his survey, and all of them, we may add, are strongly brought out and clearly enforced.

As De Beaumont well remarks, the book met with prodigious success, not only in France, but in other countries, and was perhaps even more popular than his first work. It was twice translated into English; and on the occasion of a third visit to England, which he made in the following year, it secured for him a still more hearty welcome than he had received twentytwo years before. On his return to France the English government placed a national vessel at his command to convey him across the Channel, an honor by which he seems to have been much gratified, but which the French papers were not allowed to mention. For the English constitution he had a just admiration; but he was not insensible to the vices of the English character, and, notwithstanding his many personal friends in England, he freely expressed his opinions on this point. "Mr. Grote sometimes delights us by sending English newspapers,' he wrote to De Beaumont, in December, 1856. "There is a charming frankness in their nationality. In their eyes the enemies of England must be rogues, and her friends great men. It is their only standard." To Mrs. Grote he wrote, a month later: "In the eyes of an Englishman a cause is just if it be the interest of England that it should succeed. A man or a government that is useful to England has every kind of merit, and one that does England harm every possible fault. The criterion of what is honorable, or great, or just, is to be found in the degree of favor or of opposition to English interests." And he repeatedly expostulated with his English friends on the pusillanimous laudations with which the English press and people bespattered Louis Napoleon.

De Tocqueville did not long enjoy the increased reputation

which the Ancien Régime gave him. His health had long been delicate, and he had sometimes been compelled to pass a winter under more genial skies than those of Paris or Normandy; but neither he nor his friends had ever been led to think that his disease was of a pulmonary character. In June, 1858, however, he broke a blood-vessel; and from that time he began to fail rapidly, but without losing hope of ultimate recovery. At length, after four months' delay, he set out for Cannes, in the South of France, to pass the winter. He arrived there in November, and fixed his residence in one of the most charming spots of that lovely neighborhood; but the season was unfavorable, and during much of the time he was confined to the house, and even to his room. His wife and one of his brothers were with him almost constantly, though during a part of the time Madame de Tocqueville was prostrated by severe illness; and it was not until the last that he sent for any of his other friends. One of the most cherished, J. J. Ampère, only reached Cannes in time to assist in paying the last tribute of respect to his memory. He died on the 16th of April, 1859; and his remains were finally laid to rest in the parish cemetery of Tocqueville.

Among the illustrious men whose deaths have made that year forever memorable not one left a purer record; and his name well deserves to be placed by the side of those of Hallam, Prescott, Macaulay, and Humboldt. He had a vigorous intellect, great powers of analysis and generalization, an unspotted character, and a tender and affectionate nature. His wife was bound to him by the closest sympathies, and he never suffered his early or his later friendships to be chilled by absence or the lapse of time. As a statesman he would probably never have risen to the foremost place, though under any circumstances he must have held a respectable rank. As an historian and a political philosopher his pre-eminence is undeniable; and if he had lived to finish his latest work we doubt not that he would have acquired a still higher reputation. The more thoroughly his moral and intellectual character is studied, and the more carefully his writings are examined, the more deserving of lasting honor will they be found.