Accompanied by M. de Beaumont, Tocqueville passed a year in this
country, and the chief results of his visit appeared in the first two
volumes of his "Democracy in America," which were published in January,
1835. The success of the book was instant and extraordinary. His
publisher, who had undertaken it with reluctance, had ventured on a
first edition of but five hundred copies; and in one of his letters,
shortly after its publication, Tocqueville tells pleasantly of the
bookseller's ingenuous surprise at the interest which the work had
excited. "I went yesterday morning to Gosselin's [the publisher]; he
received me with the most beaming face in the world, saying to me,
'Well, now, so it seems you have made a _chef-d'oeuvre_.' Does not
that expression paint the complete man of business? I sat down, and we
talked of our second edition."

From this time Tocqueville was famous. In the autumn of the same year,
1835, he married an English lady, Miss Mottley, who had long resided in
France, and the happiness of his private life was secured at the very
moment when he was entering upon the cares and anxieties of a public
career. In 1836 the French Academy decreed for his book an extraordinary
prize; in 1838 he was elected a member of the Institute; and in 1841,
a year after the publication of the last volumes of his work, he was
chosen member of the Academy. From 1839 to 1848, Tocqueville, elected
and reëlected from Valognes, sat without interruption in the Chamber of
Deputies, where he constantly voted with the constitutional opposition.
His nature was too sensitive and his health too delicate to enable him
to hold a foremost place as orator in the debates of this period. His
habits of mind were, moreover, those of a writer rather than of a public
speaker. But the firmness and moderation of his principles and the
clearness and justice of his opinions secured for him a general respect,