arriages.

I am grieved to find that you have suffered so much this year from
bronchitis. I fear that your larynx can scarcely endure an English
winter. But it is very hard to be obliged to expatriate oneself every
year. I fear, however, that such must be my fate for some winters to
come, and the pain with which I anticipate it makes me sympathise more
acutely with you.

We know not, as yet, whether we are to have peace or war. Whichever it
be, a mortal blow has struck the popularity of Louis Napoleon. What
maintained him was the belief that he was the protector of our material
interests: interests to which we now sacrifice all others. The events of
the last month show, with the utmost vividness, that these very interests
may be endangered by the arbitrary and irrational will of a despot. The
feelings, therefore, which were his real support are now bitterly hostile
to him.

I feel, in short, that a considerable change in our Government is
approaching.

Even our poor _Corps legislatif_, a week ago, refused to take into
consideration the Budget, until it was informed whether it were to be a
war budget or a peace budget. Great was the fury of those who represented
the Government. They exclaimed that the Chamber misapprehended its
jurisdiction, and that it had nothing to do with political questions. The
Chamber, however, or rather its committee on the Budget, held its ground,
and extorted from the Government some explanations.

Adieu, my dear Senior. Say everything that is kind to the Grotes, the
Reeves, the Lewises--in short, to all our common friends, and believe in
the sincerity of my friendship.

A. DE TOCQUEVILLE.

[This was M. de Tocqueville's last letter to Mr. Senior. He died on the
16th of April.--ED.]

Hotel Westminster, Rue de la Paix, April 25, 1859.

My dear Madame de Tocqueville,--I was in the country, and it was only
last Friday, as I was passing through London on my way to Paris, that I
heard of the irreparable loss that we, indeed that France and Europe,
have suffered.

It cannot alleviate your distress to be told how universal and deep is
the sympathy with it--quite as much in England as in France.

It has thrown a gloom over society, not only over that portion which had
the happiness and the honour of intimacy with M.A. de Tocqueville, but
even of his acquaintances, and of those too whose acquaintance was only
with his works.

I have, as you know, been for about a year, the depositary