Spring,' perhaps
his finest short lyric, reflects this influence and predilection.
his finest short lyric, reflects this influence and predilection.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v25 - Tas to Tur
My little wheel kept humming round, the dog barked,
the bird sang; and withal there was such a stillness in the neigh-
borhood that I do not recollect of any storm or foul weather all
the time I staid there. No one wandered thither; no wild beast
came near our dwelling: I was satisfied, and worked along in
peace from day to day. One would perhaps be very happy could
he pass his life so undisturbedly to the end.
"From the little that I read, I formed quite marvelous no-
tions of the world and its people; all taken from myself and my
society. When I read of witty persons, I could not figure them
but like the little shock; great ladies, I conceived, were like the
bird; all old women, like my mistress. I had read somewhat of
love too; and often in fancy I would play strange stories with
myself. I figured out the fairest knight on earth; adorned him
with all perfections, without knowing rightly, after all my labor,
how he looked: but I could feel a hearty pity for myself when
he ceased to love me; I would then, in thought, make long
## p. 14953 (#537) ##########################################
JOHANN LUDWIG TIECK
14953
melting speeches, or perhaps aloud, to try if I could win him
back. You smile! These young days are in truth far away
from us all.
"I now liked better to be left alone, for I was then sole mis-
tress of the house. The dog loved me, and did all I wanted;
the bird replied to all my questions with his rhyme; my wheel
kept briskly turning, and at bottom I had never any wish for
change. When my dame returned from her long wanderings, she
would praise my diligence; she said her house, since I belonged
to it, was managed far more perfectly; she took a pleasure in my
growth and healthy looks: in short, she treated me in all points
like her daughter.
"Thou art a good girl, child,' said she once to me, in her
creaking tone; if thou continuest so, it will be well with thee:
but none ever prospers when he leaves the straight path; pun-
ishment will overtake him, though it may be late. ' I gave little
heed to this remark of hers at the time, for in all my temper
and movements I was very lively; but by night it occurred to
me again, and I could not understand what she meant by it. I
considered all the words attentively; I had read of riches, and at
last it struck me that her pearls and jewels might perhaps be
something precious. Ere long this thought grew clearer to me.
But the straight path, and leaving it? What could she mean by
this?
"I was now fourteen: it is the misery of man that he arrives
at understanding through the loss of innocence. I now saw well
enough that it lay with me to take the jewels and the bird in
the old woman's absence, and go forth with them and see the
world I had read of. Perhaps too it would then be possible that
I might meet the fairest of all knights, who forever dwelt in my
memory.
"At first this thought was nothing more than any other
thought: but when I used to be sitting at my wheel, it still
returned to me against my will; and I sometimes followed it so
far, that I already saw myself adorned in splendid attire, with
princes and knights around me. On awakening from these dreams,
I would feel a sadness when I looked up and found myself still
in the little cottage. For the rest, if I went through my duties,
the old woman troubled herself little about what I thought or
felt.
## p. 14954 (#538) ##########################################
JOHANN LUDWIG TIECK
"One day she went out again, telling me that she should be
away on this occasion longer than usual; that I must take strict
charge of everything, and not let the time hang heavy on my
hands. I had a sort of fear on taking leave of her, for I felt as
if I should not see her any more. I looked long after her, and
knew not why I felt so sad: it was almost as if my purpose had
already stood before me, without myself being conscious of it.
"Never did I tend the dog and the bird with such diligence
as now: they were nearer to my heart than formerly. The old
woman had been gone some days, when I rose one morning in
the firm mind to leave the cottage, and set out with the bird to
see this world they talked so much of. I felt pressed and ham-
pered in my heart: I wished to stay where I was, and yet the
thought of that afflicted me; there was a strange contention in
my soul, as if between two discordant spirits. One moment my
peaceful solitude would seem to me most beautiful; the next
the image of a new world, with its many wonders, would again
enchant me.
14954
"I knew not what to make of it: the dog leaped up continu-
ally about me; the sunshine spread abroad over the fields; the
green birch-trees glittered: I kept feeling as if I had something I
must do in haste; so I caught the little dog, tied him up in the
room, and took the cage with the bird under my arm.
The dog
writhed and whined at this unusual treatment; he looked at me
with begging eyes, but I feared to have him with me. I also
took one pot of jewels, and concealed it by me; the rest I left.
"The bird turned its head very strangely when I crossed the
threshold; the dog tugged at his cord to follow me, but he was
forced to stay.
"I did not take the road to the wild rocks, but went in the
opposite direction. The dog still whined and barked, and it
touched me to the heart to hear him: the bird tried once or
twice to sing; but as I was carrying him, the shaking put him
out.
"The farther I went, the fainter grew the barking, and at
last it altogether ceased. I wept, and had almost turned back;
but the longing to see something new still hindered me.
"I had got across the hills, and through some forests, when
the night came on, and I was forced to turn aside into a village.
I blushed exceedingly on entering the inn: they showed me to a
## p. 14955 (#539) ##########################################
JOHANN LUDWIG TIECK
J4955
room and bed; I slept pretty quietly, only that I dreamed of the
old woman, and her threatening me.
"My journey had not much variety. The further I went, the
more I was afflicted by the recollection of my old mistress and
the little dog; I considered that in all likelihood the poor shock
would die of hunger, and often in the woods I thought my dame
would suddenly meet me. Thus amid tears and sobs I went
along; when I stopped to rest, and put the cage on the ground,
the bird struck up his song, and brought but too keenly to my
mind the fair habitation I had left. As human nature is forget-
ful, I imagined that my former journey, in my childhood, had
not been so sad and woeful as the present; I wished to be as I
was then.
"I had some jewels; and now, after wandering on for several
days, I reached a village. At the very entrance I was struck
with something strange: I felt terrified, and knew not why; but
I soon bethought myself, for it was the village where I was
born! How amazed was I! How the tears ran down my cheeks
for gladness, for a thousand singular remembrances! Many things
were changed: new houses had been built; some, just raised
when I went away, were now fallen, and had marks of fire on
them; everything was far smaller and more confined than I had
fancied. It rejoiced my very heart that I should see my parents
once more after such an absence: I found their little cottage, the
well-known threshold; the door-latch was standing as of old — it
seemed to me as if I had shut it only yesternight. My heart
beat violently, I hastily lifted the latch; but faces I had never
seen before looked up and gazed at me. I asked for the shep-
herd Martin: they told me that his wife and he were dead three
years ago. I drew back quickly, and left the village weeping
-
aloud.
"I had figured out so beautifully how I would surprise them
with my riches: by the strangest chance, what I had only
dreamed in childhood was become reality; and now it was all in
vain, they could not rejoice with me, and that which had been
my first hope in life was lost forever.
—
"In a pleasant town I hired a small house and garden, and
took myself a maid. The world, in truth, proved not so won-
derful as I had painted it; but I forgot the old woman and my
former way of life more and more, and on the whole I was con-
tented.
## p. 14956 (#540) ##########################################
14956
JOHANN LUDWIG TIECK
"For a long while the bird ceased to sing; I was therefore
not a little frightened when one night he suddenly began again,
with a different rhyme. He sang:-
'Alone in wood so gay,
Ah, far away!
But thou wilt say
Some other day,
'Twere best to stay
Alone in wood so gay. '
"Throughout the night I could not close an eye: all things
again occurred to my remembrance; and I felt more than ever
that I had not acted rightly. When I rose, the aspect of the
bird distressed me greatly; he looked at me continually, and his
presence did me ill. There was now no end to his song; he
sang it louder and more shrilly than he had been wont. The
more I looked at him, the more he pained and frightened me: at
last I opened the cage, put in my hand, and grasped his neck;
I squeezed my fingers hard together; he looked at me: I slack-
ened them; but he was dead. I buried him in the garden.
"After this there came a fear over me for my maid: I looked
back upon myself, and fancied she might rob or murder me.
For a long while I had been acquainted with a young knight,
whom I altogether liked. I bestowed on him my hand. — And
with this, Sir Walther, ends my story. "
"Ay, you should have seen her then," said Eckbert warmly;
"seen her youth, her loveliness, and what a charm her lonely
way of life had given her. I had no fortune; it was through
her love these riches came to me: we moved hither, and our
marriage has at no time brought us anything but good. "
"But with our tattling," added Bertha, "it is growing very
late; we must go to sleep. "
She rose, and proceeded to her chamber; Walther, with a kiss.
of her hand, wished her good night, saying: "Many thanks, noble
lady; I can well figure you beside your singing bird, and how
you fed poor little Strohmian. »
Walther likewise went to sleep; Eckbert alone still walked in
a restless humor up and down the room. "Are not men fools? "
said he at last. "I myself occasioned this recital of my wife's
history, and now such confidence appears to me improper! Will
he not abuse it? Will he not communicate the secret to others?
## p. 14957 (#541) ##########################################
JOHANN LUDWIG TIECK
14957
Will he not-for such is human nature-cast unblessed thoughts
on our jewels, and form pretext and lay plans to get possession
of them? "
It now occurred to his mind that Walther had not taken
leave of him so cordially as might have been expected after
such a mark of trust. The soul once set upon suspicion finds
in every trifle something to confirm it. Eckbert, on the other
hand, reproached himself for such ignoble feelings to his worthy
friend; yet still he could not cast them out. All night he
plagued himself with such uneasy thoughts, and got very little
sleep.
Bertha was unwell next day, and could not come to breakfast;
Walther did not seem to trouble himself much about her illness,
but left her husband also rather coolly. Eckbert could not com-
prehend such conduct. He went to see his wife, and found her
in a feverish state; she said her last night's story must have
agitated her.
From that day Walther visited the castle of his friend but
seldom; and when he did appear, it was but to say a few un-
meaning words and then depart. Eckbert was exceedingly dis-
tressed by this demeanor: to Bertha or Walther he indeed said
nothing of it; but to any person his internal disquietude was vis-
ible enough.
Bertha's sickness wore an aspect more and more serious; the
doctor grew alarmed: the red had vanished from his patient's
cheeks, and her eyes were becoming more and more inflamed.
One morning she sent for her husband to her bedside; the
nurses were ordered to withdraw.
"Dear Eckbert," she began, "I must disclose a secret to thee,
which has almost taken away my senses, which is ruining my
health, unimportant trifle as it may appear. Thou mayest re-
member, often as I talked of my childhood, I could never call
to mind the name of the dog that was so long beside me; now,
that night on taking leave, Walther all at once said to me: 'I
can well figure you, and how you fed poor little Strohmian. ' Is
it chance? Did he guess the name? Did he know it, and speak
it on purpose ? If so, how stands this man connected with my
destiny? At times I struggled with myself, as if I but imagined
this mysterious business; but alas! it is certain, too certain.
felt a shudder that a stranger should help me to recall the mem-
ory of my secrets. What sayest thou, Eckbert? »
I
## p. 14958 (#542) ##########################################
14958
JOHANN LUDWIG TIECK
Eckbert looked at his sick and agitated wife with deep emo-
tion; he stood silent and thoughtful; then spoke some words
of comfort to her, and went out. In a distant chamber he
walked to and fro in indescribable disquiet. Walther for many
years had been his sole companion; and now this person was the
only mortal in the world whose existence pained and oppressed
him. It seemed as if he should be gay and light of heart, were
that one thing but removed. He took his bow, to dispel these
thoughts; and went to hunt.
It was a rough, stormy, winter day; the snow was lying deep
on the hills, and bending down the branches of the trees. He
roved about; the sweat was standing on his brow; he found no
game, and this embittered his ill-humor. All at once he saw an
object moving in the distance: it was Walther gathering moss
from the trunks of trees. Scarce knowing what he did, he bent
his bow: Walther looked round, and gave a threatening gesture;
but the arrow was already flying, and he sank transfixed by
it.
For a great while after this occurrence, Eckbert lived in the
deepest solitude; he had all along been melancholy, for the
strange history of his wife disturbed him, and he dreaded some
unlucky incident or other; but at present he was utterly at
variance with himself. The murder of his friend arose inces-
santly before his mind; he lived in the anguish of continual
remorse.
A young knight, named Hugo, made advances to the silent,
melancholy Eckbert, and appeared to have a true affection for
him.
Eckbert felt himself exceedingly surprised; he met the
knight's friendship with the greater readiness, the less he had
anticipated it. The two were now frequently together; Hugo
showed his friend all possible attentions: one scarcely ever went
to ride without the other; in all companies they got together.
In a word, they seemed inseparable.
Eckbert was never happy longer than a few transitory mo-
ments: for he felt too clearly that Hugo loved him only by
mistake; that he knew him not, was unacquainted with his his-
tory; and he was seized again with the same old longing to
unbosom himself wholly, that he might be sure whether Hugo
was his friend or not. But again his apprehensions, and the
fear of being hated and abhorred, withheld him. There were
many hours in which he felt so much impressed with his entire
## p. 14959 (#543) ##########################################
JOHANN LUDWIG TIECK
14959
worthlessness, that he believed no mortal, not a stranger to his
history, could entertain regard for him. Yet still he was unable
to withstand himself: on a solitary ride he disclosed his whole
history to Hugo, and asked if he could love a murderer. Hugo
seemed touched, and tried to comfort him. Eckbert returned to
town with a lighter heart.
But it seemed to be his doom that in the very hour of confi-
dence he should always find materials for suspicion. Scarcely
had they entered the public hall, when, in the glitter of the many
lights, Hugo's looks had ceased to satisfy him. He thought he
noticed a malicious smile: he remarked that Hugo did not speak
to him as usual; that he talked with the rest, and seemed to
pay no heed to him. In the party was an old knight, who had
always shown himself the enemy of Eckbert, had often asked
about his riches and his wife in a peculiar style. With this man
Hugo was conversing; they were speaking privately, and cast-
ing looks at Eckbert. The suspicions of the latter seemed con-
firmed; he thought himself betrayed, and a tremendous rage took
hold of him. As he continued gazing, on a sudden he discerned
the countenance of Walther, - all his features, all the form so
well known to him; he gazed, and looked, and felt convinced that
it was none but Walther who was talking to the knight. His
horror cannot be described; in a state of frenzy he rushed out of
the hall, left the town over-night, and after many wanderings
returned to his castle. .
He resolved to take a journey, that he might reduce his
thoughts to order; the hope of friendship, the desire of social
intercourse, he had now forever given up.
He set out without prescribing to himself any certain route;
indeed he took small heed of the country he passed through.
Having hastened on for some days at the quickest pace of his
horse, on a sudden he found himself entangled in a labyrinth of
rocks, from which he could discover no outlet. At length he
met an old peasant, who guided him by a path leading past a
waterfall; he offered him some coins for his guidance, but the
peasant would not take them.
"What use is it? " said Eckbert. "I could believe that this
man too, was none but Walther. " He looked round once more,
and it was none but Walther. Eckbert spurred his horse as fast
as it could gallop over meads and forests, till it sank exhausted
to the earth. Regardless of this, he hastened forward on foot.
## p. 14960 (#544) ##########################################
14960
JOHANN LUDWIG TIECK
In a dreamy mood he mounted a hill: he fancied he caught
the sound of a lively barking at a little distance; the birch-trees
whispered in the intervals, and in the strangest notes he heard
this song:
"Alone in the wood so gay,
Once more I stay;
None dare me slay,
The evil far away:
Ah, here I stay,
Alone in wood so gay. "
The sense, the consciousness, of Eckbert had departed; it
was a riddle which he could not solve, whether he was dream-
ing now, or had before dreamed of a wife and friend. The mar-
velous was mingled with the common; the world around him
seemed enchanted, and he himself was incapable of thought or
recollection.
A crooked, bent old woman crawled coughing up the hill
with a crutch. "Art thou bringing me my bird, my pearls, my
dog? " cried she to him. "See how injustice punishes itself!
No one but I was Walther, was Hugo. "
"God of heaven! " said Eckbert, muttering to himself: "in
what frightful solitude have I passed my life? "
"And Bertha was thy sister. "
Eckbert sank to the ground.
"Why did she leave me deceitfully? All would have been
fair and well: her time of trial was already finished. She was
the daughter of a knight, who had her nursed in a shepherd's
house; the daughter of thy father. "
"Why have I always had a forecast of this dreadful thought? "
cried Eckbert.
"Because in early youth thy father told thee: he could not
keep this daughter by him on account of his second wife, her
stepmother. "
Eckbert lay distracted and dying on the ground. Faint and
bewildered, he heard the old woman speaking, the dog barking,
and the bird repeating its song.
1
## p. 14961 (#545) ##########################################
14961
HENRY TIMROD
(1829-1867)
ENRY TIMROD was one of the pioneer American poets of the
South. Singing in an untoward day, hounded misfor-
tune, dying young, he yet breathed into his song the fer-
vid beauty of his land. His personal record makes a brief, pathetic
story. He was the son of William Henry Timrod, who was of
German extraction and a man of remarkable mental power, himself
something of a poet. Henry was born in Charleston, South Caro-
lina, on December 8th, 1829, and got his schooling in that city.
He
then entered the University of Georgia, but owing to his slender
purse was unable to finish his course; however, he read avidly and
grounded himself in good literature while in college. In those days
he was always inditing love verses to pretty girls, real or imagined.
Next, the dreamy, imaginative fellow tried to study law, only to find
it uncongenial,- the common lot of those called to literature. So
he supported himself until the war-time by private tutoring in the fam-
ily of a Carolina planter. When the Rebellion broke out, he became
war correspondent of the Charleston Mercury; but the horrors of
war acting on his sensitive nature made the task distasteful. His
appointment as assistant editor on the Columbia South-Carolinian
in 1864 gave a promise of more congenial work and brighter fortune.
He had married the woman of his choice, he was able to set up a
modest home, and children were born to him. But the respite of
home and happiness was all too short. He lost a darling child. Sher-
man's March to the Sea, with its devastation of the city, ruined his
business and left him a broken man. He lived thereafter From hand
to mouth, often in literal want of bread, getting temporary govern-
ment employment to tide over a crisis, and steadily lapsing into ill-
health. Finally, after the forewarning of several severe hemorrhages,
he died on the anniversary of the death of Poe, October 7th, 1867,
under forty years of age, -a melancholy life-struggle and seeming
life-failure. The biographies of Southern poets like Timrod and Lan-
ier make grim reading.
Timrod received so little encouragement in his literary work as
to sadden and embitter him. A small volume of his verse was pub-
lished in 1860, but with scanty recognition. Here and there a critic
saw merit in it, but it never came into general popularity. The
XXV-936
## p. 14962 (#546) ##########################################
14962
HENRY TIMROD
Northern magazines would not take his contributions. he was out of
the current of literary activity. He was regarded with some local
pride, and at one time a movement was set on foot to publish and
present him with a handsome illustrated edition of his poems for
circulation in England; but to his great disappointment the project
fell through, not unnaturally, since the national situation drew
men's minds from thoughts of literature. The definite edition of the
poems is posthumous,- that issued in 1873, with a memoir by his
dear friend and fellow-poet, Paul Hamilton Hayne. A perusal of this
book reveals the fine quality of Timrod's work. Done under every
disadvantage, incomplete and inadequate as it seems in comparison
with what, under favoring conditions, he might have achieved, it is
nevertheless very true, sweet, and heartfelt singing. Timrod had a
deep, reverent love of nature, and was a disciple of Wordsworth with-
out imitating that high priest of nature-worship.
Spring,' perhaps
his finest short lyric, reflects this influence and predilection. He was
also a broad-minded patriot, who, while in a chant like his 'Caro-
lina' he could voice sectional feeling, could in that noble piece
'The Cotton Boll,' and in other lyrics, look prophetically into the
future, and hail the dawn of a beneficent peace, a wonderful national
prosperity. Timrod's style has nothing of the erratic about it: his
diction is simple, chaste, felicitous; his images and similes unforced
and pleasing. If he is to be called a poet of promise rather than
performance, it is only in view of the poor opportunity he had, and
in the conviction that had fortune been more kindly, he would have
richly repaid her in what he gave the world.
-
SPRING
SPRIN
PRING, with that nameless pathos in the air
Which dwells with all things fair,
Spring, with her golden suns and silver rain,
Is with us once again.
Out in the lonely woods the jasmine burns
Its fragrant lamps, and turns
Into a royal court with green festoons
The banks of dark lagoons.
In the deep heart of every forest tree
The blood is all aglee,
And there's a look about the leafless bowers
As if they dreamed of flowers.
## p. 14963 (#547) ##########################################
HENRY TIMROD
14963
Yet still on every side we trace the hand
Of Winter in the land,
Save where the maple reddens on the lawn,
Flushed by the season's dawn.
Or where, like those strange semblances we find
That age to childhood bind,
The elm puts on, as if in Nature's scorn,
The brown of Autumn corn.
As yet the turf is dark, although you know
That not a span below,
A thousand germs are groping through the gloom,
And soon will burst their tomb.
Already, here and there, on frailest stems
Appear some azure gems,
Small as might deck, upon a gala day,
The forehead of a fay.
In gardens you may note amid the dearth
The crocus breaking earth;
And near the snowdrop's tender white and green,
The violet in its screen.
But many gleams and shadows need must pass
Along the budding grass,
And weeks go by, before the enamored South
Shall kiss the rose's mouth.
Still there's a sense of blossoms yet unborn
In the sweet airs of morn;
One almost looks to see the very street
Grow purple at his feet.
At times a fragrant breeze comes floating by,
And brings, you know not why,
A feeling as when eager crowds await
Before a palace gate
Some wondrous pageant; and you scarce would start,
If from a beech's heart,
A blue-eyed Dryad, stepping forth, should say,
"Behold me! I am May! "
Ah! who would couple thoughts of war and crime
With such a blessed time!
## p. 14964 (#548) ##########################################
14964
HENRY TIMROD
Who in the west wind's aromatic breath
Could hear the call of Death!
Yet not more surely shall the Spring awake
The voice of wood and brake,
Than she shall rouse, for all her tranquil charms,
A million men to arms.
There shall be deeper hues upon her plains
Than all her sunlit rains,
And every gladdening influence around,
Can summon from the ground.
Oh! standing on this desecrated mold,
Methinks that I behold,
Lifting her bloody daisies up to God,
Spring kneeling on the sod,
And calling, with the voice of all her rills,
Upon the ancient hills
To fall and crush the tyrants and the slaves
Who turn her meads to graves.
SONNET
M
OST men know love but as a part of life:
They hide it in some corner of the breast,
Even from themselves; and only when
In the brief pauses of that daily strife,-
Wherewith the world might else be not so rife,-
They draw it forth (as one draws forth a toy
To soothe some ardent, kiss-exacting boy),
And hold it up to sister, child, or wife.
Ah me! why may not love and life be one?
Why walk we thus alone, when by our side,
Love, like a visible God, might be our guide?
How would the marts grow noble! and the street,
Worn like a dungeon floor by weary feet,
Seem then a golden court-way of the Sun!
ey rest
## p. 14965 (#549) ##########################################
14965
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
(1805-1859)
o ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE belongs the honor of the discovery
of political America,-a discovery all the more significant
because the logical result of a close observation of national
affairs in Europe, and of the main current directing them. Tocque-
ville was the first European politician of the nineteenth century to
comprehend fully that the trend of modern civilization is in the
direction of democracy; that democratic ideals, whether acceptable
or not, must be taken into account, for a complete understanding of
certain phenomena of European history not
only in the last century, but in the last
eight centuries. He was also the first to
appreciate that the forces of democracy
should be turned to the best advantage
whatever the form of government; and the
first to look to America as the one country
where democracy, having had a logical and
Consistent growth, could be studied with the
greatest edification.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
To understand Tocqueville's intense in-
terest in democratic institutions, it is neces-
sary to consider his immediate ancestry,
and the environment in which he was
reared. His father was of the old and
honorable family the Clérels, proprietors of Tocqueville on the coast
of Normandy,- a family linked more prominently with the magis-
tracy than with the nobility. His mother was the granddaughter
of Malesherbes, the learned magistrate who undertook the defense of
Louis XVI. before the Convention, and for his loyalty was subse-
quently put to death, together with many of his family. Madame de
Tocqueville and her husband were imprisoned, but escaped the guillo-
tine by the opportune death of Robespierre. On the Restoration in
1815, the elder Tocqueville, father of Alexis, reassumed the title of
count. His famous son was born at Verneuil, Department of Seine-
et-Oise, July 29th, 1805, and was educated at the College of Metz;
passing from there to Paris, where, after a course of legal studies,
he was called to the bar in 1825. Louis XVIII. had died in 1824,
and the inadequate Charles X. occupied the French throne.
## p. 14966 (#550) ##########################################
14966
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
After a tour in Italy and Sicily, where with characteristic interest
he observed chiefly the political and social condition of the inhabit-
ants, Tocqueville returned to France, entering upon magisterial duties
as juge auditeur at Versailles. His wonderful sensitiveness to the cur-
rents of political life made him aware of the revolutionary forces
continually at work under the surface of the monarchical government,
and drew him to the consideration of the causes of these disturb-
ances. In 1830 the Revolution of July brought Louis Philippe to the
throne. From the July government Tocqueville and his colleague,
Gustave de Beaumont, accepted a commission to inquire into the
working of the penitentiary system in America.
ance.
This visit to the United States was to be of momentous import-
To Tocqueville, alive to the full import of the political phe-
nomena of his own generation, and of that preceding, it was nothing
less than a pilgrimage to the temple of the strange new god
Democracy. The abnormal manifestations of this spirit had spurred
him on to a study of its normal development. He returned to pub-
lish in 1833 a treatise on the penitentiary system in the United
States, and in 1835 his great work, Democracy in America. '
book is one of the most noteworthy of all books on political subjects,
not only because it was the first European consideration and expo-
sition of the principles of the United States government, but because
the
it was the first comprehensive treatment of democracy itself, of
spirit underlying the letter. "Democracy is the picture, America the
frame," Tocqueville wrote of the book. In the Introduction he
says:
The
"It is not then merely to satisfy a legitimate curiosity that I have exam-
ined America: my wish has been to find there instruction by which we may
ourselves profit. Whoever should imagine that I have intended to write a
panegyric would be strangely mistaken. . . Nor has it been my object
to advocate any form of government in particular; for I am of opinion that
absolute excellence is rarely to be found in any system of laws. I have not
even pretended to judge whether the social revolution, which I believe to be
irresistible, is advantageous or prejudicial to mankind. I have acknowledged
this revolution as a fact already accomplished or on the eve of its accomplish-
ment; and I have selected that nation from amongst those which have under-
gone it, in which its development has been the most peaceful and the most
complete, in order to discern its natural consequences, and to find out if possi-
ble the means of rendering it profitable to mankind. I confess that in America
I saw more than America: I sought there the image of democracy itself, with
its inclinations, its character, its prejudices, and its passions, in order to learn
what we have to fear or to hope from its progress. "
It is this detachment from his subject that gives to Tocqueville's
work much of its value. He has the disinterestedness of the ideal
## p. 14967 (#551) ##########################################
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
14967
statesman, who notes the pulse of the times with extreme care only
that he and others may know how to deal wisely with the body pol-
itic. Personally, Tocqueville might be an absolute monarchist for
aught that the book betrays of his preferences. He merges himself
in his curiosity concerning this powerful spirit of the age.
Aside from its value as a dispassionate inquiry into the merits of
democracy, Democracy in America' is remarkable as a sharply
drawn picture of political and social institutions in the United States,
excluding nothing that could be a source of enlightenment. The
first volume is taken up mainly with a consideration of government
and organization, of American townships, of the State, of judicial
power, of political jurisdiction, of the Federal Constitution, of political
parties, of the liberty of the press, and of the government of the
democracy; then follow some highly significant chapters on the
advantages and disadvantages accruing from democratic government.
These show a political subtlety which at times reaches the degree of
prophecy. Especially is this true in the discussion of parties in the
United States; in the recognition of the tyranny which may lurk in
the power of the majority, and from which Tocqueville believes the
greatest dangers to the State are to be feared. The second volume
is concerned with the influence of democracy upon the intellect of
the United States; upon the feelings of the Americans; upon man-
ners; upon political society. Reading the entire work in the light of
over fifty years of national development, this generation can realize,
as Tocqueville's contemporaries could not, how deeply he had pene-
trated to the essence of America's democracy, how few of his obser-
vations concerned what was merely superficial or transitory.
Yet this exhaustive study of democracy in the United States
was by no means intended as a preliminary to the advocacy of its
institutions for European governments, but to demonstrate that
the democratic spirit may be linked with social and religious order.
Tocqueville perceived that in France this spirit was well-nigh syn-
onymous with anarchy; finding its home among the illiterate and
the disordered, and so inducing in the minds of the conservative and
law-abiding the belief that it could be productive of nothing but evil.
This belief he wished to dispel. In concluding his great work he
writes:
-
"For myself, who now look back from this extreme limit of my task and
discover from afar, but at once, the various objects which have attracted
my more attentive investigation upon my way, I am full of apprehensions
and hopes. I perceive mighty dangers which may be avoided or alleviated;
and I cling with a firmer hold to the belief that for democratic nations to be
virtuous and prosperous, they require but to will it. . . The nations of
our time cannot prevent the conditions of men from becoming equal; but it
•
## p. 14968 (#552) ##########################################
14968
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
depends upon themselves whether the principle of equality is to lead them to
servitude or freedom, to knowledge or barbarism, to prosperity or wretched-
ness. »
'Democracy in America' at once achieved a signal success: it
was read throughout Europe, being translated into nearly all Euro-
pean languages. In 1836 Tocqueville received the Montyon prize of
several thousand francs, which is bestowed each year by the French
Institute upon the work of the greatest moral utility produced dur-
ing the year. In 1837 he was made a member of the Academy of
Moral and Political Sciences, and in 1841 of the French Academy.
About this time he visited England, receiving there an enthusiastic
reception from the Liberal party. In England he married a Miss
Motley. Upon his return to France, he became, by a family arrange-
ment, possessor of the estate of Tocqueville.
In 1837 he was a candidate for the representation of Valoques
in the Chamber of Deputies, but was defeated. His political career
began in 1839; when, his character and principles being better known
and appreciated, he was elected by the same district, with a large
majority. As a practical politician, Tocqueville was not entirely suc-
cessful, although his influence in the legislature was always pene-
trative and lasting. He was of too exalted a character, of too lofty
an idealism, to ride triumphantly upon the surface current of events.
He was lacking in diplomacy and in calculation. His opposition to
Guizot and to Louis Napoleon was founded strictly upon principle.
Predicting the Revolution of 1848, he conformed to the new condition
of affairs only so long as Louis Napoleon represented a moderate
and reasonable Republicanism. In 1849 he was vice-president of the
Assembly, and Minister of Foreign Affairs from June to October of
the same year. The Coup d'État of 1851, by which Louis Napoleon
became Napoleon III. , forced Tocqueville into private life, from which
he did not again emerge.
In 1856 he published the first part of 'L'Ancien Régime et la
Révolution,' a work which he was not destined to complete. His
health, which had been impaired since his visit to America, began to
fail. In 1858 he was obliged to seek the south of France for the
relief of a pulmonary trouble. He died on the 16th of April, 1859.
His 'Memoirs and Correspondence' were published in the following
year.
In 1896 appeared an English translation of his 'Recollections'
- of the period between the Revolution of 1848 and the 30th of
October, 1849. These 'Recollections' have a great personal as well
as political interest; throwing light as they do upon a character of
unusual charm and beauty, in whom devotion to an ideal was blended
with a certain rare acquiescence in the march of events,- a patience
only possible to the seer. While the absolute element of unqualified
-
## p. 14969 (#553) ##########################################
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
14969
admiration must be present always in estimates of Tocqueville, ap-
preciation of his life and work increases with the increasing years,
since that life and work were intimate with the future, rather than
with his own time and place.
EDUCATION OF YOUNG WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES
From Democracy in America,' by permission of the Century Company,
publishers
N°
FREE communities ever existed without morals; and as I
observed in the former part of this work, morals are the
work of woman. Consequently, whatever affects the con-
dition of women, their habits and their opinions, has great politi-
cal importance in my eyes.
Amongst almost all Protestant nations, young women are far
more the mistresses of their own actions than they are in Catho-
lic countries. This independence is still greater in Protestant
countries like England, which have retained or acquired the right
of self-government: freedom is then infused into the domestic
circle by political habits and religious opinions. In the United
States, the doctrines of Protestantism are combined with great
political liberty and a most democratic state of society; and no-
where are young women surrendered so early or so completely
to their own guidance.
Long before an American girl arrives at the marriageable
age, her emancipation from paternal control begins: she has
scarcely ceased to be a child when she already thinks for herself,
speaks with freedom, and acts on her own impulse.
The great
scene of the world is constantly open to her view: far from seek-
ing to conceal it from her, it is every day disclosed more com-
pletely; and she is taught to survey it with a firm and calm
gaze. Thus the vices and dangers of society are early revealed
to her; as she sees them clearly, she views them without illus-
ion, and braves them without fear; for she is full of reliance on
her own strength, and her confidence seems to be shared by all
around her.
An American girl scarcely ever displays that virginal softness
in the midst of young desires, or that innocent and ingenuous
grace, which usually attend the European woman in the transition
## p. 14970 (#554) ##########################################
14970
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
from girlhood to youth. It is rare that an American woman, at
any age, displays childish timidity or ignorance. Like the young
women of Europe, she seeks to please, but she knows precisely
the cost of pleasing. If she does not abandon herself to evil, at
least she knows that it exists; and she is remarkable rather for
purity of manners than for chastity of mind.
I have been frequently surprised, and almost frightened, at
the singular address and happy boldness with which young
women in America contrive to manage their thoughts and their
language, amidst all the difficulties of free conversation: a phi-
losopher would have stumbled at every step along the narrow
path which they trod without accident and without effort. It is
easy indeed to perceive that even amidst the independence of
early youth, an American woman is always mistress of herself:
she indulges in all permitted pleasures without yielding herself
up to any of them; and her reason never allows the reins of
self-guidance to drop, though it often seems to hold them loosely.
In France, where traditions of every age are still so strangely
mingled in the opinions and tastes of the people, women com-
monly receive a reserved, retired, and almost conventual educa-
tion, as they did in aristocratic times; and then they are suddenly
abandoned, without a guide and without assistance, in the midst.
of all the irregularities inseparable from democratic society.
The Americans are more consistent. They have found out
that in a democracy the independence of individuals cannot fail
to be very great, youth premature, tastes ill restrained, customs
fleeting, public opinion often unsettled and powerless, paternal
authority weak, and marital authority contested. Under these
circumstances, believing that they had little chance of repress-
ing in woman the most vehement passions of the human heart,
they held that the surer way was to teach her the art of com-
bating those passions for herself. As they could not prevent her
virtue from being exposed to frequent danger, they determined
that she should know how best to defend it; and more reliance
was placed on the free vigor of her will than on safeguards
which have been shaken or overthrown. Instead, then, of incul-
cating mistrust of herself, they constantly seek to enhance her
confidence in her own strength of character. As it is neither
possible nor desirable to keep a young woman in perpetual and
complete ignorance, they hasten to give her a precocious knowl-
edge on all subjects. Far from hiding the corruptions of the
## p. 14971 (#555) ##########################################
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
14971
world from her, they prefer that she should see them at once,
and train herself to shun them; and they hold it of more import-
ance to protect her conduct than to be over-scrupulous of the
innocence of her thoughts.
Although the Americans are a very religious people, they do
not rely on religion alone to defend the virtue of woman: they
seek to arm her reason also. In this respect they have followed
the same method as in several others: they first make vigorous
efforts to cause individual independence to control itself, and they
do not call in the aid of religion until they have reached the
utmost limits of human strength.
I am aware that an education of this kind is not without
danger; I am sensible that it tends to invigorate the judgment
at the expense of the imagination, and to make cold and virtuous
women instead of affectionate wives and agreeable companions
to man. Society may be more tranquil and better regulated, but
domestic life has often fewer charms. These however are sec-
ondary evils, which may be braved for the sake of higher inter-
ests. At the stage at which we are now arrived, the choice is
no longer left to us: a democratic education is indispensable to
protect women from the dangers with which democratic institu-
tions and manners surround them.
POLITICAL ASSOCIATION
From Democracy in America, by permission of the Century Company,
publishers
IT
T MUST be acknowledged that the unrestrained liberty of polit-
ical association has not hitherto produced, in the United
States, the fatal results which might perhaps be expected
from it elsewhere. The right of association was imported from
England, and it has always existed in America; the exercise of
this privilege is now incorporated with the manners and customs
of the people. At the present time, the liberty of association
has become a necessary guaranty against the tyranny of the
majority. In the United States, as soon as a party has become
dominant, all public authority passes into its hands; its private
supporters occupy all the offices, and have all the force of the
## p. 14972 (#556) ##########################################
14972
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
administration at their disposal. As the most distinguished mem-
bers of the opposite party cannot surmount the barrier which
excludes them from power, they must establish themselves out-
side of it; and oppose the whole moral authority of the minority
to the physical power which domineers over it. Thus a dangerous
expedient is used to obviate a still more formidable danger.
The omnipotence of the majority appears to me to be so full
of peril to the American republics, that the dangerous means
used to bridle it seem to be more advantageous than prejudicial.
And here I will express an opinion which may remind the
reader of what I said when speaking of the freedom of town-
ships. There are no countries in which associations are more
needed to prevent the despotism of faction or the arbitrary power
of a prince, than those which are democratically constituted.
In aristocratic nations, the body of the nobles and the wealthy
are in themselves natural associations, which check the abuses
of power. In countries where such associations do not exist, if
private individuals cannot create an artificial and temporary
substitute for them, I can see no permanent protection against
the most galling tyranny; and a great people may be oppressed
with impunity by a small faction, or by a single individual.
The meeting of a great political convention (for there are
conventions of all kinds), which may frequently become a neces-
sary measure, is always a serious occurrence, even in America,
and one which judicious patriots cannot regard without alarm.
This was very perceptible in the convention of 1831, at which all
the most distinguished members strove to moderate its language,
and to restrain its objects within certain limits. It is probable
that this convention exercised a great influence on the minds of
the malcontents, and prepared them for the open revolt against
the commercial laws of the Union which took place in 1832.
It cannot be denied that the unrestrained liberty of associa-
tion for political purposes is the privilege which a people is
longest in learning how to exercise. If it does not throw the
nation into anarchy, it perpetually augments the chances of that
calamity. On one point, however, this perilous liberty offers a
security against dangers of another kind: in countries where asso-
ciations are free, secret associations are unknown. In America
there are factions, but no conspiracies.
## p. 14973 (#557) ##########################################
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
14973
CAUSE OF LEGISLATIVE INSTABILITY IN AMERICA
From Democracy in America, by permission of the Century Company,
publishers
I
HAVE already spoken of the natural defects of democratic insti-
tutions: each one of them increases in the same ratio as the
power of the majority. To begin with the most evident
of them all, the mutability of the laws is an evil inherent in a
democratic government, because it is natural to democracies to
raise new men to power. But this evil is more or less sensible
in proportion to the authority and the means of action which the
legislature possesses.
In America, the authority exercised by the legislatures is
supreme; nothing prevents them from accomplishing their wishes
with celerity and with irresistible power, and they are supplied
with new representatives every year. That is to say, the circum-
stances which contribute most powerfully to democratic instability,
and which admit of the free application of caprice to the most
important objects, are here in full operation. Hence America
is, at the present day, the country of all where laws last the
shortest time. Almost all the American constitutions have been
amended within thirty years: there is therefore not one Ameri-
can State which has not modified the principles of its legislation
in that time. As for the laws themselves, a single glance at the
archives of the different States of the Union suffices to convince
one that in America the activity of the legislator never slackens.
Not that the American democracy is naturally less stable than
any other; but it is allowed to follow, in the formation of the
laws, the natural instability of its desires.
The omnipotence of the majority, and the rapid as well as
absolute manner in which its decisions are executed in the United
States, not only render the law unstable, but exercise the same
influence upon the execution of the law and the conduct of the
administration. As the majority is the only power which it is
important to court, all its projects are taken up with the greatest
ardor; but no sooner is its attention distracted than all its ardor
ceases: whilst in the free States of Europe, where the adminis-
tration is at once independent and secure, the projects of the
legislature continue to be executed, even when its attention is
directed to other objects.
## p. 14974 (#558) ##########################################
14974
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY
From Democracy in America,' by permission of the Century Company
publishers
I
HOLD it to be an impious and detestable maxim, that politically
speaking the people have a right to do anything; and yet I
have asserted that all authority originates in the will of the
majority. Am I then in contradiction with myself?
A general law, which bears the name of justice, has been
made and sanctioned, not only by a majority of this or that peo-
ple, but by a majority of mankind. The rights of every people
are therefore confined within the limits of what is just. A nation
may be considered as a jury which is empowered to represent
society at large, and to apply justice, which is its law. Ought
such a jury, which represents society, to have more power than
the society itself whose laws it executes ?
When I refuse to obey an unjust law, I do not contest the
right of the majority to command, but I simply appeal from the
sovereignty of the people to the sovereignty of mankind. Some
have not feared to assert that a people can never outstep the
boundaries of justice and reason in those affairs which are pecul-
iarly its own; and that consequently, full power may be given to
the majority by which they are represented. But this is the lan-
guage of a slave.
A majority taken collectively is only an individual, whose
opinions, and frequently whose interests, are opposed to those of
another individual, who is styled a minority. If it be admitted
that a man possessing absolute power may misuse that power
by wronging his adversaries, why should not a majority be liable
to the same reproach? Men do not change their characters by
uniting with each other; nor does their patience in the presence
of obstacles increase with their strength. For my own part I
cannot believe it: the power to do everything, which I should
refuse to one of my equals, I will never grant to any number of
them.
I do not think that for the sake of preserving liberty, it is
possible to combine several principles in the same government so
as really to oppose them to one another. The form of govern-
ment which is usually termed mixed has always appeared to me
a mere chimera. Accurately speaking, there is no such thing as
a mixed government, in the same sense usually given to that
## p. 14975 (#559) ##########################################
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
14975
word; because in all communities some one principle of action
may be discovered which preponderates over the others. Eng-
land in the last century—which has been especially cited as an
example of this sort of government-was essentially an aristo-
cratic State, although it comprised some great elements of de-
mocracy; for the laws and customs of the country were such that
the aristocracy could not but preponderate in the long run, and
direct public affairs according to its own will. The error arose
from seeing the interests of the nobles perpetually contending
with those of the people, without considering the issue of the
contest, which was really the important point. When a com-
munity actually has a mixed government,- that is to say, when
it is equally divided between adverse principles,—it must either
experience a revolution or fall into anarchy.
I am therefore of opinion that social power superior to all
others must always be placed somewhere; but I think that liberty
is endangered when this power finds no obstacle which can retard
its course, and give it time to moderate its own vehemence.
Unlimited power is in itself a bad and dangerous thing.
Human beings are not competent to exercise it with discretion.
God alone can be omnipotent, because his wisdom and his justice.
are always equal to his power. There is no power on earth so
worthy of honor in itself, or clothed with rights so sacred, that
I would admit its uncontrolled and all-predominant authority.
When I see that the right and the means of absolute command
are conferred on any power whatever, be it called a people or a
king, an aristocracy or a democracy, a monarchy or a republic, I
say there is a germ of tyranny; and I seek to live elsewhere,
under other laws.
In my opinion, the main evil of the present democratic insti-
tutions of the United States does not arise, as is often asserted
in Europe, from their weakness, but from their irresistible
strength. I am not so much alarmed at the excessive liberty
which reigns in that country, as at the inadequate securities.
the bird sang; and withal there was such a stillness in the neigh-
borhood that I do not recollect of any storm or foul weather all
the time I staid there. No one wandered thither; no wild beast
came near our dwelling: I was satisfied, and worked along in
peace from day to day. One would perhaps be very happy could
he pass his life so undisturbedly to the end.
"From the little that I read, I formed quite marvelous no-
tions of the world and its people; all taken from myself and my
society. When I read of witty persons, I could not figure them
but like the little shock; great ladies, I conceived, were like the
bird; all old women, like my mistress. I had read somewhat of
love too; and often in fancy I would play strange stories with
myself. I figured out the fairest knight on earth; adorned him
with all perfections, without knowing rightly, after all my labor,
how he looked: but I could feel a hearty pity for myself when
he ceased to love me; I would then, in thought, make long
## p. 14953 (#537) ##########################################
JOHANN LUDWIG TIECK
14953
melting speeches, or perhaps aloud, to try if I could win him
back. You smile! These young days are in truth far away
from us all.
"I now liked better to be left alone, for I was then sole mis-
tress of the house. The dog loved me, and did all I wanted;
the bird replied to all my questions with his rhyme; my wheel
kept briskly turning, and at bottom I had never any wish for
change. When my dame returned from her long wanderings, she
would praise my diligence; she said her house, since I belonged
to it, was managed far more perfectly; she took a pleasure in my
growth and healthy looks: in short, she treated me in all points
like her daughter.
"Thou art a good girl, child,' said she once to me, in her
creaking tone; if thou continuest so, it will be well with thee:
but none ever prospers when he leaves the straight path; pun-
ishment will overtake him, though it may be late. ' I gave little
heed to this remark of hers at the time, for in all my temper
and movements I was very lively; but by night it occurred to
me again, and I could not understand what she meant by it. I
considered all the words attentively; I had read of riches, and at
last it struck me that her pearls and jewels might perhaps be
something precious. Ere long this thought grew clearer to me.
But the straight path, and leaving it? What could she mean by
this?
"I was now fourteen: it is the misery of man that he arrives
at understanding through the loss of innocence. I now saw well
enough that it lay with me to take the jewels and the bird in
the old woman's absence, and go forth with them and see the
world I had read of. Perhaps too it would then be possible that
I might meet the fairest of all knights, who forever dwelt in my
memory.
"At first this thought was nothing more than any other
thought: but when I used to be sitting at my wheel, it still
returned to me against my will; and I sometimes followed it so
far, that I already saw myself adorned in splendid attire, with
princes and knights around me. On awakening from these dreams,
I would feel a sadness when I looked up and found myself still
in the little cottage. For the rest, if I went through my duties,
the old woman troubled herself little about what I thought or
felt.
## p. 14954 (#538) ##########################################
JOHANN LUDWIG TIECK
"One day she went out again, telling me that she should be
away on this occasion longer than usual; that I must take strict
charge of everything, and not let the time hang heavy on my
hands. I had a sort of fear on taking leave of her, for I felt as
if I should not see her any more. I looked long after her, and
knew not why I felt so sad: it was almost as if my purpose had
already stood before me, without myself being conscious of it.
"Never did I tend the dog and the bird with such diligence
as now: they were nearer to my heart than formerly. The old
woman had been gone some days, when I rose one morning in
the firm mind to leave the cottage, and set out with the bird to
see this world they talked so much of. I felt pressed and ham-
pered in my heart: I wished to stay where I was, and yet the
thought of that afflicted me; there was a strange contention in
my soul, as if between two discordant spirits. One moment my
peaceful solitude would seem to me most beautiful; the next
the image of a new world, with its many wonders, would again
enchant me.
14954
"I knew not what to make of it: the dog leaped up continu-
ally about me; the sunshine spread abroad over the fields; the
green birch-trees glittered: I kept feeling as if I had something I
must do in haste; so I caught the little dog, tied him up in the
room, and took the cage with the bird under my arm.
The dog
writhed and whined at this unusual treatment; he looked at me
with begging eyes, but I feared to have him with me. I also
took one pot of jewels, and concealed it by me; the rest I left.
"The bird turned its head very strangely when I crossed the
threshold; the dog tugged at his cord to follow me, but he was
forced to stay.
"I did not take the road to the wild rocks, but went in the
opposite direction. The dog still whined and barked, and it
touched me to the heart to hear him: the bird tried once or
twice to sing; but as I was carrying him, the shaking put him
out.
"The farther I went, the fainter grew the barking, and at
last it altogether ceased. I wept, and had almost turned back;
but the longing to see something new still hindered me.
"I had got across the hills, and through some forests, when
the night came on, and I was forced to turn aside into a village.
I blushed exceedingly on entering the inn: they showed me to a
## p. 14955 (#539) ##########################################
JOHANN LUDWIG TIECK
J4955
room and bed; I slept pretty quietly, only that I dreamed of the
old woman, and her threatening me.
"My journey had not much variety. The further I went, the
more I was afflicted by the recollection of my old mistress and
the little dog; I considered that in all likelihood the poor shock
would die of hunger, and often in the woods I thought my dame
would suddenly meet me. Thus amid tears and sobs I went
along; when I stopped to rest, and put the cage on the ground,
the bird struck up his song, and brought but too keenly to my
mind the fair habitation I had left. As human nature is forget-
ful, I imagined that my former journey, in my childhood, had
not been so sad and woeful as the present; I wished to be as I
was then.
"I had some jewels; and now, after wandering on for several
days, I reached a village. At the very entrance I was struck
with something strange: I felt terrified, and knew not why; but
I soon bethought myself, for it was the village where I was
born! How amazed was I! How the tears ran down my cheeks
for gladness, for a thousand singular remembrances! Many things
were changed: new houses had been built; some, just raised
when I went away, were now fallen, and had marks of fire on
them; everything was far smaller and more confined than I had
fancied. It rejoiced my very heart that I should see my parents
once more after such an absence: I found their little cottage, the
well-known threshold; the door-latch was standing as of old — it
seemed to me as if I had shut it only yesternight. My heart
beat violently, I hastily lifted the latch; but faces I had never
seen before looked up and gazed at me. I asked for the shep-
herd Martin: they told me that his wife and he were dead three
years ago. I drew back quickly, and left the village weeping
-
aloud.
"I had figured out so beautifully how I would surprise them
with my riches: by the strangest chance, what I had only
dreamed in childhood was become reality; and now it was all in
vain, they could not rejoice with me, and that which had been
my first hope in life was lost forever.
—
"In a pleasant town I hired a small house and garden, and
took myself a maid. The world, in truth, proved not so won-
derful as I had painted it; but I forgot the old woman and my
former way of life more and more, and on the whole I was con-
tented.
## p. 14956 (#540) ##########################################
14956
JOHANN LUDWIG TIECK
"For a long while the bird ceased to sing; I was therefore
not a little frightened when one night he suddenly began again,
with a different rhyme. He sang:-
'Alone in wood so gay,
Ah, far away!
But thou wilt say
Some other day,
'Twere best to stay
Alone in wood so gay. '
"Throughout the night I could not close an eye: all things
again occurred to my remembrance; and I felt more than ever
that I had not acted rightly. When I rose, the aspect of the
bird distressed me greatly; he looked at me continually, and his
presence did me ill. There was now no end to his song; he
sang it louder and more shrilly than he had been wont. The
more I looked at him, the more he pained and frightened me: at
last I opened the cage, put in my hand, and grasped his neck;
I squeezed my fingers hard together; he looked at me: I slack-
ened them; but he was dead. I buried him in the garden.
"After this there came a fear over me for my maid: I looked
back upon myself, and fancied she might rob or murder me.
For a long while I had been acquainted with a young knight,
whom I altogether liked. I bestowed on him my hand. — And
with this, Sir Walther, ends my story. "
"Ay, you should have seen her then," said Eckbert warmly;
"seen her youth, her loveliness, and what a charm her lonely
way of life had given her. I had no fortune; it was through
her love these riches came to me: we moved hither, and our
marriage has at no time brought us anything but good. "
"But with our tattling," added Bertha, "it is growing very
late; we must go to sleep. "
She rose, and proceeded to her chamber; Walther, with a kiss.
of her hand, wished her good night, saying: "Many thanks, noble
lady; I can well figure you beside your singing bird, and how
you fed poor little Strohmian. »
Walther likewise went to sleep; Eckbert alone still walked in
a restless humor up and down the room. "Are not men fools? "
said he at last. "I myself occasioned this recital of my wife's
history, and now such confidence appears to me improper! Will
he not abuse it? Will he not communicate the secret to others?
## p. 14957 (#541) ##########################################
JOHANN LUDWIG TIECK
14957
Will he not-for such is human nature-cast unblessed thoughts
on our jewels, and form pretext and lay plans to get possession
of them? "
It now occurred to his mind that Walther had not taken
leave of him so cordially as might have been expected after
such a mark of trust. The soul once set upon suspicion finds
in every trifle something to confirm it. Eckbert, on the other
hand, reproached himself for such ignoble feelings to his worthy
friend; yet still he could not cast them out. All night he
plagued himself with such uneasy thoughts, and got very little
sleep.
Bertha was unwell next day, and could not come to breakfast;
Walther did not seem to trouble himself much about her illness,
but left her husband also rather coolly. Eckbert could not com-
prehend such conduct. He went to see his wife, and found her
in a feverish state; she said her last night's story must have
agitated her.
From that day Walther visited the castle of his friend but
seldom; and when he did appear, it was but to say a few un-
meaning words and then depart. Eckbert was exceedingly dis-
tressed by this demeanor: to Bertha or Walther he indeed said
nothing of it; but to any person his internal disquietude was vis-
ible enough.
Bertha's sickness wore an aspect more and more serious; the
doctor grew alarmed: the red had vanished from his patient's
cheeks, and her eyes were becoming more and more inflamed.
One morning she sent for her husband to her bedside; the
nurses were ordered to withdraw.
"Dear Eckbert," she began, "I must disclose a secret to thee,
which has almost taken away my senses, which is ruining my
health, unimportant trifle as it may appear. Thou mayest re-
member, often as I talked of my childhood, I could never call
to mind the name of the dog that was so long beside me; now,
that night on taking leave, Walther all at once said to me: 'I
can well figure you, and how you fed poor little Strohmian. ' Is
it chance? Did he guess the name? Did he know it, and speak
it on purpose ? If so, how stands this man connected with my
destiny? At times I struggled with myself, as if I but imagined
this mysterious business; but alas! it is certain, too certain.
felt a shudder that a stranger should help me to recall the mem-
ory of my secrets. What sayest thou, Eckbert? »
I
## p. 14958 (#542) ##########################################
14958
JOHANN LUDWIG TIECK
Eckbert looked at his sick and agitated wife with deep emo-
tion; he stood silent and thoughtful; then spoke some words
of comfort to her, and went out. In a distant chamber he
walked to and fro in indescribable disquiet. Walther for many
years had been his sole companion; and now this person was the
only mortal in the world whose existence pained and oppressed
him. It seemed as if he should be gay and light of heart, were
that one thing but removed. He took his bow, to dispel these
thoughts; and went to hunt.
It was a rough, stormy, winter day; the snow was lying deep
on the hills, and bending down the branches of the trees. He
roved about; the sweat was standing on his brow; he found no
game, and this embittered his ill-humor. All at once he saw an
object moving in the distance: it was Walther gathering moss
from the trunks of trees. Scarce knowing what he did, he bent
his bow: Walther looked round, and gave a threatening gesture;
but the arrow was already flying, and he sank transfixed by
it.
For a great while after this occurrence, Eckbert lived in the
deepest solitude; he had all along been melancholy, for the
strange history of his wife disturbed him, and he dreaded some
unlucky incident or other; but at present he was utterly at
variance with himself. The murder of his friend arose inces-
santly before his mind; he lived in the anguish of continual
remorse.
A young knight, named Hugo, made advances to the silent,
melancholy Eckbert, and appeared to have a true affection for
him.
Eckbert felt himself exceedingly surprised; he met the
knight's friendship with the greater readiness, the less he had
anticipated it. The two were now frequently together; Hugo
showed his friend all possible attentions: one scarcely ever went
to ride without the other; in all companies they got together.
In a word, they seemed inseparable.
Eckbert was never happy longer than a few transitory mo-
ments: for he felt too clearly that Hugo loved him only by
mistake; that he knew him not, was unacquainted with his his-
tory; and he was seized again with the same old longing to
unbosom himself wholly, that he might be sure whether Hugo
was his friend or not. But again his apprehensions, and the
fear of being hated and abhorred, withheld him. There were
many hours in which he felt so much impressed with his entire
## p. 14959 (#543) ##########################################
JOHANN LUDWIG TIECK
14959
worthlessness, that he believed no mortal, not a stranger to his
history, could entertain regard for him. Yet still he was unable
to withstand himself: on a solitary ride he disclosed his whole
history to Hugo, and asked if he could love a murderer. Hugo
seemed touched, and tried to comfort him. Eckbert returned to
town with a lighter heart.
But it seemed to be his doom that in the very hour of confi-
dence he should always find materials for suspicion. Scarcely
had they entered the public hall, when, in the glitter of the many
lights, Hugo's looks had ceased to satisfy him. He thought he
noticed a malicious smile: he remarked that Hugo did not speak
to him as usual; that he talked with the rest, and seemed to
pay no heed to him. In the party was an old knight, who had
always shown himself the enemy of Eckbert, had often asked
about his riches and his wife in a peculiar style. With this man
Hugo was conversing; they were speaking privately, and cast-
ing looks at Eckbert. The suspicions of the latter seemed con-
firmed; he thought himself betrayed, and a tremendous rage took
hold of him. As he continued gazing, on a sudden he discerned
the countenance of Walther, - all his features, all the form so
well known to him; he gazed, and looked, and felt convinced that
it was none but Walther who was talking to the knight. His
horror cannot be described; in a state of frenzy he rushed out of
the hall, left the town over-night, and after many wanderings
returned to his castle. .
He resolved to take a journey, that he might reduce his
thoughts to order; the hope of friendship, the desire of social
intercourse, he had now forever given up.
He set out without prescribing to himself any certain route;
indeed he took small heed of the country he passed through.
Having hastened on for some days at the quickest pace of his
horse, on a sudden he found himself entangled in a labyrinth of
rocks, from which he could discover no outlet. At length he
met an old peasant, who guided him by a path leading past a
waterfall; he offered him some coins for his guidance, but the
peasant would not take them.
"What use is it? " said Eckbert. "I could believe that this
man too, was none but Walther. " He looked round once more,
and it was none but Walther. Eckbert spurred his horse as fast
as it could gallop over meads and forests, till it sank exhausted
to the earth. Regardless of this, he hastened forward on foot.
## p. 14960 (#544) ##########################################
14960
JOHANN LUDWIG TIECK
In a dreamy mood he mounted a hill: he fancied he caught
the sound of a lively barking at a little distance; the birch-trees
whispered in the intervals, and in the strangest notes he heard
this song:
"Alone in the wood so gay,
Once more I stay;
None dare me slay,
The evil far away:
Ah, here I stay,
Alone in wood so gay. "
The sense, the consciousness, of Eckbert had departed; it
was a riddle which he could not solve, whether he was dream-
ing now, or had before dreamed of a wife and friend. The mar-
velous was mingled with the common; the world around him
seemed enchanted, and he himself was incapable of thought or
recollection.
A crooked, bent old woman crawled coughing up the hill
with a crutch. "Art thou bringing me my bird, my pearls, my
dog? " cried she to him. "See how injustice punishes itself!
No one but I was Walther, was Hugo. "
"God of heaven! " said Eckbert, muttering to himself: "in
what frightful solitude have I passed my life? "
"And Bertha was thy sister. "
Eckbert sank to the ground.
"Why did she leave me deceitfully? All would have been
fair and well: her time of trial was already finished. She was
the daughter of a knight, who had her nursed in a shepherd's
house; the daughter of thy father. "
"Why have I always had a forecast of this dreadful thought? "
cried Eckbert.
"Because in early youth thy father told thee: he could not
keep this daughter by him on account of his second wife, her
stepmother. "
Eckbert lay distracted and dying on the ground. Faint and
bewildered, he heard the old woman speaking, the dog barking,
and the bird repeating its song.
1
## p. 14961 (#545) ##########################################
14961
HENRY TIMROD
(1829-1867)
ENRY TIMROD was one of the pioneer American poets of the
South. Singing in an untoward day, hounded misfor-
tune, dying young, he yet breathed into his song the fer-
vid beauty of his land. His personal record makes a brief, pathetic
story. He was the son of William Henry Timrod, who was of
German extraction and a man of remarkable mental power, himself
something of a poet. Henry was born in Charleston, South Caro-
lina, on December 8th, 1829, and got his schooling in that city.
He
then entered the University of Georgia, but owing to his slender
purse was unable to finish his course; however, he read avidly and
grounded himself in good literature while in college. In those days
he was always inditing love verses to pretty girls, real or imagined.
Next, the dreamy, imaginative fellow tried to study law, only to find
it uncongenial,- the common lot of those called to literature. So
he supported himself until the war-time by private tutoring in the fam-
ily of a Carolina planter. When the Rebellion broke out, he became
war correspondent of the Charleston Mercury; but the horrors of
war acting on his sensitive nature made the task distasteful. His
appointment as assistant editor on the Columbia South-Carolinian
in 1864 gave a promise of more congenial work and brighter fortune.
He had married the woman of his choice, he was able to set up a
modest home, and children were born to him. But the respite of
home and happiness was all too short. He lost a darling child. Sher-
man's March to the Sea, with its devastation of the city, ruined his
business and left him a broken man. He lived thereafter From hand
to mouth, often in literal want of bread, getting temporary govern-
ment employment to tide over a crisis, and steadily lapsing into ill-
health. Finally, after the forewarning of several severe hemorrhages,
he died on the anniversary of the death of Poe, October 7th, 1867,
under forty years of age, -a melancholy life-struggle and seeming
life-failure. The biographies of Southern poets like Timrod and Lan-
ier make grim reading.
Timrod received so little encouragement in his literary work as
to sadden and embitter him. A small volume of his verse was pub-
lished in 1860, but with scanty recognition. Here and there a critic
saw merit in it, but it never came into general popularity. The
XXV-936
## p. 14962 (#546) ##########################################
14962
HENRY TIMROD
Northern magazines would not take his contributions. he was out of
the current of literary activity. He was regarded with some local
pride, and at one time a movement was set on foot to publish and
present him with a handsome illustrated edition of his poems for
circulation in England; but to his great disappointment the project
fell through, not unnaturally, since the national situation drew
men's minds from thoughts of literature. The definite edition of the
poems is posthumous,- that issued in 1873, with a memoir by his
dear friend and fellow-poet, Paul Hamilton Hayne. A perusal of this
book reveals the fine quality of Timrod's work. Done under every
disadvantage, incomplete and inadequate as it seems in comparison
with what, under favoring conditions, he might have achieved, it is
nevertheless very true, sweet, and heartfelt singing. Timrod had a
deep, reverent love of nature, and was a disciple of Wordsworth with-
out imitating that high priest of nature-worship.
Spring,' perhaps
his finest short lyric, reflects this influence and predilection. He was
also a broad-minded patriot, who, while in a chant like his 'Caro-
lina' he could voice sectional feeling, could in that noble piece
'The Cotton Boll,' and in other lyrics, look prophetically into the
future, and hail the dawn of a beneficent peace, a wonderful national
prosperity. Timrod's style has nothing of the erratic about it: his
diction is simple, chaste, felicitous; his images and similes unforced
and pleasing. If he is to be called a poet of promise rather than
performance, it is only in view of the poor opportunity he had, and
in the conviction that had fortune been more kindly, he would have
richly repaid her in what he gave the world.
-
SPRING
SPRIN
PRING, with that nameless pathos in the air
Which dwells with all things fair,
Spring, with her golden suns and silver rain,
Is with us once again.
Out in the lonely woods the jasmine burns
Its fragrant lamps, and turns
Into a royal court with green festoons
The banks of dark lagoons.
In the deep heart of every forest tree
The blood is all aglee,
And there's a look about the leafless bowers
As if they dreamed of flowers.
## p. 14963 (#547) ##########################################
HENRY TIMROD
14963
Yet still on every side we trace the hand
Of Winter in the land,
Save where the maple reddens on the lawn,
Flushed by the season's dawn.
Or where, like those strange semblances we find
That age to childhood bind,
The elm puts on, as if in Nature's scorn,
The brown of Autumn corn.
As yet the turf is dark, although you know
That not a span below,
A thousand germs are groping through the gloom,
And soon will burst their tomb.
Already, here and there, on frailest stems
Appear some azure gems,
Small as might deck, upon a gala day,
The forehead of a fay.
In gardens you may note amid the dearth
The crocus breaking earth;
And near the snowdrop's tender white and green,
The violet in its screen.
But many gleams and shadows need must pass
Along the budding grass,
And weeks go by, before the enamored South
Shall kiss the rose's mouth.
Still there's a sense of blossoms yet unborn
In the sweet airs of morn;
One almost looks to see the very street
Grow purple at his feet.
At times a fragrant breeze comes floating by,
And brings, you know not why,
A feeling as when eager crowds await
Before a palace gate
Some wondrous pageant; and you scarce would start,
If from a beech's heart,
A blue-eyed Dryad, stepping forth, should say,
"Behold me! I am May! "
Ah! who would couple thoughts of war and crime
With such a blessed time!
## p. 14964 (#548) ##########################################
14964
HENRY TIMROD
Who in the west wind's aromatic breath
Could hear the call of Death!
Yet not more surely shall the Spring awake
The voice of wood and brake,
Than she shall rouse, for all her tranquil charms,
A million men to arms.
There shall be deeper hues upon her plains
Than all her sunlit rains,
And every gladdening influence around,
Can summon from the ground.
Oh! standing on this desecrated mold,
Methinks that I behold,
Lifting her bloody daisies up to God,
Spring kneeling on the sod,
And calling, with the voice of all her rills,
Upon the ancient hills
To fall and crush the tyrants and the slaves
Who turn her meads to graves.
SONNET
M
OST men know love but as a part of life:
They hide it in some corner of the breast,
Even from themselves; and only when
In the brief pauses of that daily strife,-
Wherewith the world might else be not so rife,-
They draw it forth (as one draws forth a toy
To soothe some ardent, kiss-exacting boy),
And hold it up to sister, child, or wife.
Ah me! why may not love and life be one?
Why walk we thus alone, when by our side,
Love, like a visible God, might be our guide?
How would the marts grow noble! and the street,
Worn like a dungeon floor by weary feet,
Seem then a golden court-way of the Sun!
ey rest
## p. 14965 (#549) ##########################################
14965
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
(1805-1859)
o ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE belongs the honor of the discovery
of political America,-a discovery all the more significant
because the logical result of a close observation of national
affairs in Europe, and of the main current directing them. Tocque-
ville was the first European politician of the nineteenth century to
comprehend fully that the trend of modern civilization is in the
direction of democracy; that democratic ideals, whether acceptable
or not, must be taken into account, for a complete understanding of
certain phenomena of European history not
only in the last century, but in the last
eight centuries. He was also the first to
appreciate that the forces of democracy
should be turned to the best advantage
whatever the form of government; and the
first to look to America as the one country
where democracy, having had a logical and
Consistent growth, could be studied with the
greatest edification.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
To understand Tocqueville's intense in-
terest in democratic institutions, it is neces-
sary to consider his immediate ancestry,
and the environment in which he was
reared. His father was of the old and
honorable family the Clérels, proprietors of Tocqueville on the coast
of Normandy,- a family linked more prominently with the magis-
tracy than with the nobility. His mother was the granddaughter
of Malesherbes, the learned magistrate who undertook the defense of
Louis XVI. before the Convention, and for his loyalty was subse-
quently put to death, together with many of his family. Madame de
Tocqueville and her husband were imprisoned, but escaped the guillo-
tine by the opportune death of Robespierre. On the Restoration in
1815, the elder Tocqueville, father of Alexis, reassumed the title of
count. His famous son was born at Verneuil, Department of Seine-
et-Oise, July 29th, 1805, and was educated at the College of Metz;
passing from there to Paris, where, after a course of legal studies,
he was called to the bar in 1825. Louis XVIII. had died in 1824,
and the inadequate Charles X. occupied the French throne.
## p. 14966 (#550) ##########################################
14966
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
After a tour in Italy and Sicily, where with characteristic interest
he observed chiefly the political and social condition of the inhabit-
ants, Tocqueville returned to France, entering upon magisterial duties
as juge auditeur at Versailles. His wonderful sensitiveness to the cur-
rents of political life made him aware of the revolutionary forces
continually at work under the surface of the monarchical government,
and drew him to the consideration of the causes of these disturb-
ances. In 1830 the Revolution of July brought Louis Philippe to the
throne. From the July government Tocqueville and his colleague,
Gustave de Beaumont, accepted a commission to inquire into the
working of the penitentiary system in America.
ance.
This visit to the United States was to be of momentous import-
To Tocqueville, alive to the full import of the political phe-
nomena of his own generation, and of that preceding, it was nothing
less than a pilgrimage to the temple of the strange new god
Democracy. The abnormal manifestations of this spirit had spurred
him on to a study of its normal development. He returned to pub-
lish in 1833 a treatise on the penitentiary system in the United
States, and in 1835 his great work, Democracy in America. '
book is one of the most noteworthy of all books on political subjects,
not only because it was the first European consideration and expo-
sition of the principles of the United States government, but because
the
it was the first comprehensive treatment of democracy itself, of
spirit underlying the letter. "Democracy is the picture, America the
frame," Tocqueville wrote of the book. In the Introduction he
says:
The
"It is not then merely to satisfy a legitimate curiosity that I have exam-
ined America: my wish has been to find there instruction by which we may
ourselves profit. Whoever should imagine that I have intended to write a
panegyric would be strangely mistaken. . . Nor has it been my object
to advocate any form of government in particular; for I am of opinion that
absolute excellence is rarely to be found in any system of laws. I have not
even pretended to judge whether the social revolution, which I believe to be
irresistible, is advantageous or prejudicial to mankind. I have acknowledged
this revolution as a fact already accomplished or on the eve of its accomplish-
ment; and I have selected that nation from amongst those which have under-
gone it, in which its development has been the most peaceful and the most
complete, in order to discern its natural consequences, and to find out if possi-
ble the means of rendering it profitable to mankind. I confess that in America
I saw more than America: I sought there the image of democracy itself, with
its inclinations, its character, its prejudices, and its passions, in order to learn
what we have to fear or to hope from its progress. "
It is this detachment from his subject that gives to Tocqueville's
work much of its value. He has the disinterestedness of the ideal
## p. 14967 (#551) ##########################################
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
14967
statesman, who notes the pulse of the times with extreme care only
that he and others may know how to deal wisely with the body pol-
itic. Personally, Tocqueville might be an absolute monarchist for
aught that the book betrays of his preferences. He merges himself
in his curiosity concerning this powerful spirit of the age.
Aside from its value as a dispassionate inquiry into the merits of
democracy, Democracy in America' is remarkable as a sharply
drawn picture of political and social institutions in the United States,
excluding nothing that could be a source of enlightenment. The
first volume is taken up mainly with a consideration of government
and organization, of American townships, of the State, of judicial
power, of political jurisdiction, of the Federal Constitution, of political
parties, of the liberty of the press, and of the government of the
democracy; then follow some highly significant chapters on the
advantages and disadvantages accruing from democratic government.
These show a political subtlety which at times reaches the degree of
prophecy. Especially is this true in the discussion of parties in the
United States; in the recognition of the tyranny which may lurk in
the power of the majority, and from which Tocqueville believes the
greatest dangers to the State are to be feared. The second volume
is concerned with the influence of democracy upon the intellect of
the United States; upon the feelings of the Americans; upon man-
ners; upon political society. Reading the entire work in the light of
over fifty years of national development, this generation can realize,
as Tocqueville's contemporaries could not, how deeply he had pene-
trated to the essence of America's democracy, how few of his obser-
vations concerned what was merely superficial or transitory.
Yet this exhaustive study of democracy in the United States
was by no means intended as a preliminary to the advocacy of its
institutions for European governments, but to demonstrate that
the democratic spirit may be linked with social and religious order.
Tocqueville perceived that in France this spirit was well-nigh syn-
onymous with anarchy; finding its home among the illiterate and
the disordered, and so inducing in the minds of the conservative and
law-abiding the belief that it could be productive of nothing but evil.
This belief he wished to dispel. In concluding his great work he
writes:
-
"For myself, who now look back from this extreme limit of my task and
discover from afar, but at once, the various objects which have attracted
my more attentive investigation upon my way, I am full of apprehensions
and hopes. I perceive mighty dangers which may be avoided or alleviated;
and I cling with a firmer hold to the belief that for democratic nations to be
virtuous and prosperous, they require but to will it. . . The nations of
our time cannot prevent the conditions of men from becoming equal; but it
•
## p. 14968 (#552) ##########################################
14968
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
depends upon themselves whether the principle of equality is to lead them to
servitude or freedom, to knowledge or barbarism, to prosperity or wretched-
ness. »
'Democracy in America' at once achieved a signal success: it
was read throughout Europe, being translated into nearly all Euro-
pean languages. In 1836 Tocqueville received the Montyon prize of
several thousand francs, which is bestowed each year by the French
Institute upon the work of the greatest moral utility produced dur-
ing the year. In 1837 he was made a member of the Academy of
Moral and Political Sciences, and in 1841 of the French Academy.
About this time he visited England, receiving there an enthusiastic
reception from the Liberal party. In England he married a Miss
Motley. Upon his return to France, he became, by a family arrange-
ment, possessor of the estate of Tocqueville.
In 1837 he was a candidate for the representation of Valoques
in the Chamber of Deputies, but was defeated. His political career
began in 1839; when, his character and principles being better known
and appreciated, he was elected by the same district, with a large
majority. As a practical politician, Tocqueville was not entirely suc-
cessful, although his influence in the legislature was always pene-
trative and lasting. He was of too exalted a character, of too lofty
an idealism, to ride triumphantly upon the surface current of events.
He was lacking in diplomacy and in calculation. His opposition to
Guizot and to Louis Napoleon was founded strictly upon principle.
Predicting the Revolution of 1848, he conformed to the new condition
of affairs only so long as Louis Napoleon represented a moderate
and reasonable Republicanism. In 1849 he was vice-president of the
Assembly, and Minister of Foreign Affairs from June to October of
the same year. The Coup d'État of 1851, by which Louis Napoleon
became Napoleon III. , forced Tocqueville into private life, from which
he did not again emerge.
In 1856 he published the first part of 'L'Ancien Régime et la
Révolution,' a work which he was not destined to complete. His
health, which had been impaired since his visit to America, began to
fail. In 1858 he was obliged to seek the south of France for the
relief of a pulmonary trouble. He died on the 16th of April, 1859.
His 'Memoirs and Correspondence' were published in the following
year.
In 1896 appeared an English translation of his 'Recollections'
- of the period between the Revolution of 1848 and the 30th of
October, 1849. These 'Recollections' have a great personal as well
as political interest; throwing light as they do upon a character of
unusual charm and beauty, in whom devotion to an ideal was blended
with a certain rare acquiescence in the march of events,- a patience
only possible to the seer. While the absolute element of unqualified
-
## p. 14969 (#553) ##########################################
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
14969
admiration must be present always in estimates of Tocqueville, ap-
preciation of his life and work increases with the increasing years,
since that life and work were intimate with the future, rather than
with his own time and place.
EDUCATION OF YOUNG WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES
From Democracy in America,' by permission of the Century Company,
publishers
N°
FREE communities ever existed without morals; and as I
observed in the former part of this work, morals are the
work of woman. Consequently, whatever affects the con-
dition of women, their habits and their opinions, has great politi-
cal importance in my eyes.
Amongst almost all Protestant nations, young women are far
more the mistresses of their own actions than they are in Catho-
lic countries. This independence is still greater in Protestant
countries like England, which have retained or acquired the right
of self-government: freedom is then infused into the domestic
circle by political habits and religious opinions. In the United
States, the doctrines of Protestantism are combined with great
political liberty and a most democratic state of society; and no-
where are young women surrendered so early or so completely
to their own guidance.
Long before an American girl arrives at the marriageable
age, her emancipation from paternal control begins: she has
scarcely ceased to be a child when she already thinks for herself,
speaks with freedom, and acts on her own impulse.
The great
scene of the world is constantly open to her view: far from seek-
ing to conceal it from her, it is every day disclosed more com-
pletely; and she is taught to survey it with a firm and calm
gaze. Thus the vices and dangers of society are early revealed
to her; as she sees them clearly, she views them without illus-
ion, and braves them without fear; for she is full of reliance on
her own strength, and her confidence seems to be shared by all
around her.
An American girl scarcely ever displays that virginal softness
in the midst of young desires, or that innocent and ingenuous
grace, which usually attend the European woman in the transition
## p. 14970 (#554) ##########################################
14970
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
from girlhood to youth. It is rare that an American woman, at
any age, displays childish timidity or ignorance. Like the young
women of Europe, she seeks to please, but she knows precisely
the cost of pleasing. If she does not abandon herself to evil, at
least she knows that it exists; and she is remarkable rather for
purity of manners than for chastity of mind.
I have been frequently surprised, and almost frightened, at
the singular address and happy boldness with which young
women in America contrive to manage their thoughts and their
language, amidst all the difficulties of free conversation: a phi-
losopher would have stumbled at every step along the narrow
path which they trod without accident and without effort. It is
easy indeed to perceive that even amidst the independence of
early youth, an American woman is always mistress of herself:
she indulges in all permitted pleasures without yielding herself
up to any of them; and her reason never allows the reins of
self-guidance to drop, though it often seems to hold them loosely.
In France, where traditions of every age are still so strangely
mingled in the opinions and tastes of the people, women com-
monly receive a reserved, retired, and almost conventual educa-
tion, as they did in aristocratic times; and then they are suddenly
abandoned, without a guide and without assistance, in the midst.
of all the irregularities inseparable from democratic society.
The Americans are more consistent. They have found out
that in a democracy the independence of individuals cannot fail
to be very great, youth premature, tastes ill restrained, customs
fleeting, public opinion often unsettled and powerless, paternal
authority weak, and marital authority contested. Under these
circumstances, believing that they had little chance of repress-
ing in woman the most vehement passions of the human heart,
they held that the surer way was to teach her the art of com-
bating those passions for herself. As they could not prevent her
virtue from being exposed to frequent danger, they determined
that she should know how best to defend it; and more reliance
was placed on the free vigor of her will than on safeguards
which have been shaken or overthrown. Instead, then, of incul-
cating mistrust of herself, they constantly seek to enhance her
confidence in her own strength of character. As it is neither
possible nor desirable to keep a young woman in perpetual and
complete ignorance, they hasten to give her a precocious knowl-
edge on all subjects. Far from hiding the corruptions of the
## p. 14971 (#555) ##########################################
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
14971
world from her, they prefer that she should see them at once,
and train herself to shun them; and they hold it of more import-
ance to protect her conduct than to be over-scrupulous of the
innocence of her thoughts.
Although the Americans are a very religious people, they do
not rely on religion alone to defend the virtue of woman: they
seek to arm her reason also. In this respect they have followed
the same method as in several others: they first make vigorous
efforts to cause individual independence to control itself, and they
do not call in the aid of religion until they have reached the
utmost limits of human strength.
I am aware that an education of this kind is not without
danger; I am sensible that it tends to invigorate the judgment
at the expense of the imagination, and to make cold and virtuous
women instead of affectionate wives and agreeable companions
to man. Society may be more tranquil and better regulated, but
domestic life has often fewer charms. These however are sec-
ondary evils, which may be braved for the sake of higher inter-
ests. At the stage at which we are now arrived, the choice is
no longer left to us: a democratic education is indispensable to
protect women from the dangers with which democratic institu-
tions and manners surround them.
POLITICAL ASSOCIATION
From Democracy in America, by permission of the Century Company,
publishers
IT
T MUST be acknowledged that the unrestrained liberty of polit-
ical association has not hitherto produced, in the United
States, the fatal results which might perhaps be expected
from it elsewhere. The right of association was imported from
England, and it has always existed in America; the exercise of
this privilege is now incorporated with the manners and customs
of the people. At the present time, the liberty of association
has become a necessary guaranty against the tyranny of the
majority. In the United States, as soon as a party has become
dominant, all public authority passes into its hands; its private
supporters occupy all the offices, and have all the force of the
## p. 14972 (#556) ##########################################
14972
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
administration at their disposal. As the most distinguished mem-
bers of the opposite party cannot surmount the barrier which
excludes them from power, they must establish themselves out-
side of it; and oppose the whole moral authority of the minority
to the physical power which domineers over it. Thus a dangerous
expedient is used to obviate a still more formidable danger.
The omnipotence of the majority appears to me to be so full
of peril to the American republics, that the dangerous means
used to bridle it seem to be more advantageous than prejudicial.
And here I will express an opinion which may remind the
reader of what I said when speaking of the freedom of town-
ships. There are no countries in which associations are more
needed to prevent the despotism of faction or the arbitrary power
of a prince, than those which are democratically constituted.
In aristocratic nations, the body of the nobles and the wealthy
are in themselves natural associations, which check the abuses
of power. In countries where such associations do not exist, if
private individuals cannot create an artificial and temporary
substitute for them, I can see no permanent protection against
the most galling tyranny; and a great people may be oppressed
with impunity by a small faction, or by a single individual.
The meeting of a great political convention (for there are
conventions of all kinds), which may frequently become a neces-
sary measure, is always a serious occurrence, even in America,
and one which judicious patriots cannot regard without alarm.
This was very perceptible in the convention of 1831, at which all
the most distinguished members strove to moderate its language,
and to restrain its objects within certain limits. It is probable
that this convention exercised a great influence on the minds of
the malcontents, and prepared them for the open revolt against
the commercial laws of the Union which took place in 1832.
It cannot be denied that the unrestrained liberty of associa-
tion for political purposes is the privilege which a people is
longest in learning how to exercise. If it does not throw the
nation into anarchy, it perpetually augments the chances of that
calamity. On one point, however, this perilous liberty offers a
security against dangers of another kind: in countries where asso-
ciations are free, secret associations are unknown. In America
there are factions, but no conspiracies.
## p. 14973 (#557) ##########################################
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
14973
CAUSE OF LEGISLATIVE INSTABILITY IN AMERICA
From Democracy in America, by permission of the Century Company,
publishers
I
HAVE already spoken of the natural defects of democratic insti-
tutions: each one of them increases in the same ratio as the
power of the majority. To begin with the most evident
of them all, the mutability of the laws is an evil inherent in a
democratic government, because it is natural to democracies to
raise new men to power. But this evil is more or less sensible
in proportion to the authority and the means of action which the
legislature possesses.
In America, the authority exercised by the legislatures is
supreme; nothing prevents them from accomplishing their wishes
with celerity and with irresistible power, and they are supplied
with new representatives every year. That is to say, the circum-
stances which contribute most powerfully to democratic instability,
and which admit of the free application of caprice to the most
important objects, are here in full operation. Hence America
is, at the present day, the country of all where laws last the
shortest time. Almost all the American constitutions have been
amended within thirty years: there is therefore not one Ameri-
can State which has not modified the principles of its legislation
in that time. As for the laws themselves, a single glance at the
archives of the different States of the Union suffices to convince
one that in America the activity of the legislator never slackens.
Not that the American democracy is naturally less stable than
any other; but it is allowed to follow, in the formation of the
laws, the natural instability of its desires.
The omnipotence of the majority, and the rapid as well as
absolute manner in which its decisions are executed in the United
States, not only render the law unstable, but exercise the same
influence upon the execution of the law and the conduct of the
administration. As the majority is the only power which it is
important to court, all its projects are taken up with the greatest
ardor; but no sooner is its attention distracted than all its ardor
ceases: whilst in the free States of Europe, where the adminis-
tration is at once independent and secure, the projects of the
legislature continue to be executed, even when its attention is
directed to other objects.
## p. 14974 (#558) ##########################################
14974
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY
From Democracy in America,' by permission of the Century Company
publishers
I
HOLD it to be an impious and detestable maxim, that politically
speaking the people have a right to do anything; and yet I
have asserted that all authority originates in the will of the
majority. Am I then in contradiction with myself?
A general law, which bears the name of justice, has been
made and sanctioned, not only by a majority of this or that peo-
ple, but by a majority of mankind. The rights of every people
are therefore confined within the limits of what is just. A nation
may be considered as a jury which is empowered to represent
society at large, and to apply justice, which is its law. Ought
such a jury, which represents society, to have more power than
the society itself whose laws it executes ?
When I refuse to obey an unjust law, I do not contest the
right of the majority to command, but I simply appeal from the
sovereignty of the people to the sovereignty of mankind. Some
have not feared to assert that a people can never outstep the
boundaries of justice and reason in those affairs which are pecul-
iarly its own; and that consequently, full power may be given to
the majority by which they are represented. But this is the lan-
guage of a slave.
A majority taken collectively is only an individual, whose
opinions, and frequently whose interests, are opposed to those of
another individual, who is styled a minority. If it be admitted
that a man possessing absolute power may misuse that power
by wronging his adversaries, why should not a majority be liable
to the same reproach? Men do not change their characters by
uniting with each other; nor does their patience in the presence
of obstacles increase with their strength. For my own part I
cannot believe it: the power to do everything, which I should
refuse to one of my equals, I will never grant to any number of
them.
I do not think that for the sake of preserving liberty, it is
possible to combine several principles in the same government so
as really to oppose them to one another. The form of govern-
ment which is usually termed mixed has always appeared to me
a mere chimera. Accurately speaking, there is no such thing as
a mixed government, in the same sense usually given to that
## p. 14975 (#559) ##########################################
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
14975
word; because in all communities some one principle of action
may be discovered which preponderates over the others. Eng-
land in the last century—which has been especially cited as an
example of this sort of government-was essentially an aristo-
cratic State, although it comprised some great elements of de-
mocracy; for the laws and customs of the country were such that
the aristocracy could not but preponderate in the long run, and
direct public affairs according to its own will. The error arose
from seeing the interests of the nobles perpetually contending
with those of the people, without considering the issue of the
contest, which was really the important point. When a com-
munity actually has a mixed government,- that is to say, when
it is equally divided between adverse principles,—it must either
experience a revolution or fall into anarchy.
I am therefore of opinion that social power superior to all
others must always be placed somewhere; but I think that liberty
is endangered when this power finds no obstacle which can retard
its course, and give it time to moderate its own vehemence.
Unlimited power is in itself a bad and dangerous thing.
Human beings are not competent to exercise it with discretion.
God alone can be omnipotent, because his wisdom and his justice.
are always equal to his power. There is no power on earth so
worthy of honor in itself, or clothed with rights so sacred, that
I would admit its uncontrolled and all-predominant authority.
When I see that the right and the means of absolute command
are conferred on any power whatever, be it called a people or a
king, an aristocracy or a democracy, a monarchy or a republic, I
say there is a germ of tyranny; and I seek to live elsewhere,
under other laws.
In my opinion, the main evil of the present democratic insti-
tutions of the United States does not arise, as is often asserted
in Europe, from their weakness, but from their irresistible
strength. I am not so much alarmed at the excessive liberty
which reigns in that country, as at the inadequate securities.
