limited both by his own temperament and by the public circumstances of
his times; of one who set more value upon ideas than upon events; who
sought intellectual satisfactions and distinctions rather than personal
advancement; who affected his contemporaries by his thought and his
integrity of principle more than by power of commanding position or
energy of resolute will. Although for many years in public life, he made
little mark on public affairs. But his influence, though indirect,
was perhaps not the less strong or permanent. The course of political
affairs is in the long run greatly modified, if not completely guided,
by the thinkers of a nation. Tocqueville's convictions kept him for the
most part in opposition to the successive governments of France during
the period of his public life. But his reputation and the weight of his
authority are continually increasing, and of the Frenchmen of the last
generation few have done so much as he to extend by his writings the
knowledge, and to strengthen by his example the love of those principles
by which liberty is maintained and secured, and upon which the real
advancement of society depends. The leading facts of his life may be
briefly told.

Born in 1805, at Paris, of an old and honorable family, his early years
were passed at home. As a youth, he was for some time at the college of
Metz; but his education was irregular, and he was not distinguished for
scholarship. In 1826 and 1827 he travelled with one of his brothers in
Italy and Sicily, and on his return to France was attached to the Court
of Justice at Versailles, where his father, the Count de Tocqueville,
was then Prefect, in the quality of _Juge-Auditeur_, an office to which
there is none correspondent in our courts. It was at this time that his
friendship with M. Gustave de Beaumont began.

For more than two years he performed the duties of this place with