over the gardens, our conversation turned on the old
aristocracy of France.

'The loss of our aristocracy,' said Tocqueville, 'is a misfortune from
which we have not even begun to recover. The Legitimists are their
territorial successors; they are the successors in their manners, in
their loyalty, and in their prejudices of _caste_; but they are not their
successors in cultivation, or intelligence, or energy, or, therefore, in
influence. Between them and the _bourgeoisie_ is a chasm, which shows no
tendency to close. Nothing but a common interest and a common pursuit
will bring them together.

'If the murder of the Duc d'Enghien had not made them recoil in terror
and disgust from Napoleon, they might have perhaps been welded into one
mass with his new aristocracy of services, talents, and wealth. They were
ready to adhere to him during the Consulate. During the Restoration they
were always at war with the _bourgeoisie_, and therefore with the
constitution, on which the power of their enemies depended. When the
result of that war was the defeat and expulsion of their leader, Charles
X., their hostility extended from the _bourgeoisie_ and the constitution
up to the Crown. Louis Philippe tried to govern by means of the middle
classes alone. Perhaps it was inevitable that he should make the attempt.
It certainly was inevitable that he should fail. The higher classes, and
the lower classes, all equally offended, combined to overthrow him. Under
the Republic they again took, to a certain extent, their place in the
State. They led the country people, who came to the assistance of the
Assembly in June 1848. The Republic was wise enough to impose no oaths.
It did not require those who were willing to serve it to begin by openly
disavowing their traditionary opinions and principles. The Legitimists
took their places in the Conseils-generaux. They joined with the
_bourgeoisie_ in local administration, the only means by which men of
different classes can coalesce.

'The socialist tendencies which are imputed to this Second Empire, the
oath which it most imprudently imposes, its pretensions to form a dynasty
and its assertion of the principle most abhorrent to them, elective
monarchy, have thrown them back into disaffection. And I believe their
disaffection to be one of our great dangers--a danger certainly increased
by the Fusion. The principal object of the Fusion is to influence the
army. The great terror of the army is divisio