ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE.


The memory of Alexis de Tocqueville belongs scarcely less to America
than to France. His book on "Democracy in America" was the foundation of
his fame. As a successful investigation by a foreigner of the nature and
working of institutions dissimilar from those of his own country, and
in many essential respects different from any which were elsewhere
established, it stands quite alone in political literature. It is still
further remarkable as the work of a very young man. Its merits were at
once acknowledged; and though twenty-six years have passed since it
appeared, it has been superseded by no later work. The book has a double
character, which has given to it an equal authority on both sides of
the Atlantic. For while it is a profound and sagacious analysis of the
spirit and methods of the American social and political system, it
is intended at the same time--more, however, by implied than open
comparison--to exhibit the relations of the principles established
here to the development of modern society and government in France and
elsewhere in Europe. It is a manual alike for the political theorist
and the practical statesman; and whatever changes our institutions may
undergo, its value will remain undiminished.

The volumes of Tocqueville's Inedited Works and Correspondence, with a
Memoir by his friend M. Gustave de Beaumont, which have lately appeared
in Paris, have, therefore, a special claim to the attention of American
readers. Their intrinsic interest is great as illustrating the life and
character not only of one of the most original and independent thinkers