the present condition of our own country, while at the same time they
display the qualities most characteristic of Tocqueville's intellect.
They are both from letters addressed to one of the most distinguished
correspondents of his later years, Madame de Swetchine.

"There are, it seems to me, two distinct divisions in morals, one as
important as the other in the eyes of God, but in which in our days his
ministers instruct us with very unequal ardor. One belongs to private
life: it embraces the relative duties of mankind as fathers, as sons, as
wives, as husbands. The other regards public life: the duties of every
citizen toward his country, and toward that human society of which he
forms a special part. Am I deceived in believing that the clergy of our
time are very much occupied with the first portion of morals, and very
little with the second? This appears to me especially observable in the
manner in which women think and feel. I see a great number of them who
have a thousand private virtues in which the direct and beneficent
action of religion manifests itself,--who, thanks to it, are most
faithful wives and excellent mothers, who show themselves just and
indulgent toward their domestics, charitable to the poor. But as to that
portion of duties which is connected with public life, they do not
seem to have even the idea of it. Not only they do not practise them
themselves, which is natural enough, but they do not seem even to have
the thought of inculcating them on those over whom they have influence.
It is a side of education that is, as it were, invisible to them. It
was not so under that old regime which, in the midst of many vices,
developed proud and manly virtues. I have often heard it told, that
my grandmother, who was a very religious (_très sainte_) woman, after
impressing upon her young son the exercise of all the duties of private
life, failed not to add,--'And then, my child, never forget that a man
owes himself above all to his country; that there is no sacrifice that