He remained a member of the
Assembly to the last. He was one of the deputies arrested on the 2d of
December, 1851, and was confined for a time at Vincennes. "Here ended
his political life. It ended with liberty in France."
The remaining years of Tocqueville's life were spent in a retirement
which might have been happy, had he not felt too deeply for happiness
the despotism which weighed upon France. He engaged in the studies that
resulted in his masterly work on "The Old Regime and the Revolution";
but these studies, instead of diverting him from the contemplation
of what France had lost, gave poignancy to the sorrow excited by her
present condition. All his hopes for the prevalence of the principles
which he had sought during life to confirm and establish, all his
personal ambitions as a public man, were completely broken down. But,
though thus defeated in hope and in desire, he was not overcome in
spirit. And the record of the closing years of his life shows, more than
that of any other portion of it, the firmness, the strength, and the
sweetness of his character.
His health, which had never been vigorous, became from year to year more
and more uncertain, and the labor which he gave to the historical work
to which he now devoted himself was frequently followed by exhaustion.
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