The leading facts of his life may be
briefly told.
Born in 1805, at Paris, of an old and honorable family, his early years
were passed at home. As a youth, he was for some time at the college of
Metz; but his education was irregular, and he was not distinguished for
scholarship. In 1826 and 1827 he travelled with one of his brothers in
Italy and Sicily, and on his return to France was attached to the Court
of Justice at Versailles, where his father, the Count de Tocqueville,
was then Prefect, in the quality of _Juge-Auditeur_, an office to which
there is none correspondent in our courts. It was at this time that his
friendship with M. Gustave de Beaumont began.
For more than two years he performed the duties of this place with
marked fidelity and ability. But at the same time he pursued studies
less narrow and technical than the law, investigating with ardor the
general questions of politics, and laying the foundation of those
principles and opinions which he afterward developed in his writings and
his public life. He witnessed the Revolution of 1830 with regret, not
because he was personally attached to the elder branch of the Bourbons,
but because he dreaded the effect of a sudden and violent change of
dynasty upon the stability of those constitutional institutions which
were of too recent establishment to be firmly rooted in France, but to
which he looked as the safeguard of liberty.
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