"--Vol. I. p. 124.
The correspondence of a man about whom such--words may be said without
exaggeration has more than a merely literary interest. This book is
one of which the literary critic is not the final judge. Tocqueville's
letters, like every genuine series of letters written without thought
of publication, have the charm and more than the simplicity of
autobiography. Their merit lies not so much in grace of style,
picturesqueness of description, or familiar freedom of composition,
as in their exhibition of power of thought combined with delicacy
and refinement of feeling, and in the frequent expression of ardent
patriotism and strong personal sympathies with public or with private
interests. They are the letters of a man who took a grave view of life,
regarding it "as an affair with which we are charged, which must be
carried through and ended with honor to ourselves." They are the letters
also of a man of strong and faithful affections; and the long series of
them addressed during twenty-five years to the Count Louis de Kergorlay
has, in addition to its interest from its variety of topics, a special
moral value as the record of a close and confidential friendship
maintained in spite of the widest divergence of political opinion during
a period of unusual political excitement.
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