and shallow minds. The grace of his manner and the charm of his conversation were, by universal admission, unrivalled in this day; while to the intercourse of daily life the exquisite polish of his spirit, mingled with a most affectionate and caressing disposition, lent a fascination that was strangely irresistible. In the midst, too, of all his rare refinement and maturity of wisdom there was a fund of enthusiasm which gave relief and animation to the whole; and there were few changes in France which he deplored more than the cold and passionless materialism which seemed to have absorbed all classes and all ages. In 1858 he describes a visit which he paid to an enthusiastic old Benedictine of ninety-six, who had shared in all the hopes and efforts of 1789; and then goes on to say to M. Freslon, his correspondent:

“J'ai déjà remarqué qu'en France la quantité de calorique intellectuel et moral était en raison inverse du nombre des années. On est plus froid à mesure qu'on est plus jeune ; et la température semble s'élever avec l'âge. Des hommes comme vous et moi paraissent déjà des enthousiastes bien ridicules aux sages de dix-huit ans. Suivant cette loi nouvelle, mon centenaire devait être tout feu. Et il l'était en effet quand il parlait des espérances de 89 et de la grande cause de la liberté. Je lui ai demandé s'il trouvait la France bien changée sous

le rapport moral. 'Ah! monsieur,' m'a-t-il repondu, ‘je crois rêver quand je me rapelle l'état des esprits dans ma jeunesse, la vivacité, la sincerité des opinions, le respect de soi-même et de l'opinion publique, le désintéressement dans la passion publique. Ah! monsieur (ajoutait-il en me serrant les mains avec l'effusion et l'emphase du xviiime siècle), on avait alors une cause: on n'a plus que des intérêts. Ily avait des liens entre les hommes: il n'y en a plus. Il est bien triste, monsieur, de survivre à son pays.''

We are naturally desirous to know the sentiments of a man at once so good, so wise, and so free, on religion—that great matter on which wise and free and good men differ so marvellously, if not so hopelessly. Neither the Memoir nor the Correspondence is very specific on this head. This much, however, appears clearly, that the subject was one that occupied his intentest thought, and that he held faith to be a possession of first necessity to individuals as to States. He often laments the indifference and infidelity of his countrymen, and their apparent inability to do as England had succeeded in doing,-to unite belief and liberty. Among memoranda and reflections written early in life and found among his papers, is the following:-"Il n'y a pas de vérité absolue," and a little further on, "Si j'étais chargé de classer les misères humaines, je le ferais dans cette ordre: 1°. Les maladies; 2°. La mort; 3°. Le doute." Many years afterwards, when he was about forty-five years old, he

writes to M. de Corcelle: "Je ne sais d'ailleurs si les dernières circonstances dans laquelle je me suis trouvé, la gravité plus grande que l'âge donne à la pensée, la solitude dans laquelle je vis, ou toute autre cause que je ne sais pas, agissent sur mon âme et y produisent un travail intérieur; la vérité est que je n'ai jamais plus senti le besoin de la base éternelle, du terrain solide sur lequel la vie doit être batie. Le doute m'a toujours paru le plus insupportable des maux de ce monde, et je l'ai constamment jugé pire que la mort.”

From this doubt, however, which he so deprecated, it was impossible for a spirit at once so searching and so honest as his ever quite to free itself; but it remained speculative merely, and though it might disturb his religious creed, it never for one moment weakened his religious sentiment; and in all that is essential, eternal, and indisputable, no sincerer Christian ever lived and died. In this, as in other matters, Tocqueville grew more tranquil with years, if not more happy. Serenity, indeed, could never be the portion upon earth of a temperament so tremblingly sensitive as his; and his later letters are filled with the most touching expressions of the growing sadness which gathered over him as he found himself becoming more and more isolated in feeling and opinion, in aspirations and in aims, from most of those around him. What his contemporaries worshiped and followed had no dignity or charms for him; he despised what they desired; he cherished what they had neglected and forsaken; they seemed hurrying down a steep incline of which he saw the inevitable abyss, but could not induce them to listen to his warnings. The past, containing so much that was beautiful and noble, was daily becoming more dead, more remote, and more forgotten; and in the immediate future, as far as human eye could penetrate, no dawn of hope was to be discerned. Much as we mourn for his untimely loss, deeply as we grieve over his empty place and his unfinished work, we can well believe that he would himself have discovered some consolation for all that he was leaving in the thought that he was "taken away from the evil to come." He died peaceably at Cannes on the 16th of April 1859: the purest, noblest, truest gentleman it was ever our privilege to know. Over no death-bed might the lofty language of Tacitus be more fitly spoken: "Si quis piorum manibus locus; si, ut sapientibus placet, non cum corpore extinguuntur magnæ animæ, placidè quiescas--nosque, domum tuam, ab infirmo desiderio et muliebribus lamentis, ad contemplationem virtutum tuarum voces, quas neque lugeri neque plangi fas est; admiratione te potius et, si natura suppeditet, emulatione decoremus."

ART. II.—THE DIPLOMATIC SERVICE.

Correspondence relating to the Affairs of Italy, presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of Her Majesty. 1861.

IT would appear that only a certain amount of public interest can be generated in a community at any given time: that this may be distributed pretty equally over many objects or concentrated on a few; but that in proportion as it is directed to some, it must be withdrawn from others. The palpable indifference to even important subjects of home politics at present prevailing among us, becomes thus a measure of the amount of interest absorbed in foreign questions. Nor is this interest likely to be allowed soon to subside. Hitherto-at all events, until very recently-Parliament and the public have, on the whole wisely, abstained from interfering in any very direct manner in the foreign policy of the country, as a subject necessarily more within the cognisance of the Executive, and more suited to its unfettered action. But the three last ministries have successively fallen on what were virtually "foreign" questions; and it is in the nature of things, that as the public interest becomes, as it most probably will, more and more absorbed in such questions, and public opinion more defined and more confident, a more direct and more sustained influence will inevitably be exerted on the actual conduct of our foreign policy. Perhaps it is well that it should be so,-and the figure we have not unfrequently cut under the guidance of those to whom its direction has been hitherto almost irresponsibly confided, makes us the less inclined to regret the change; but it is the more important that on every point connected with questions in which the public will have so direct a concern, the best information should be brought to bear. The instinctive distrust which destroyed the last Government of Lord Derby has given place to a certain amount of reliance on the sympathies of the leading members of the present Cabinet upon the Italian question—a reliance, on the whole, well grounded. There exists, nevertheless, and that among the most moderate and best-informed portion of the public, an uneasy sense that even now the undoubted feelings and opinions of the country are not adequately represented abroad, or its dignity fully sustained in the conduct of its foreign relations at home. This may be traced in the sneers at the action of diplomacy constantly recurring in the press-in the hearty aversion to the mere mention of congresses or conferences-in

the occasional outbursts of mistrust so easily provoked during the recess. It may not be amiss, then, to inquire to what extent this uneasiness is justifiable.

The diplomatic, including in the term the Foreign Office, is a branch of the public service which has been naturally, perhaps studiously, more withdrawn from public observation and criticism than any other; and it is not easy for the uninitiated to obtain any very reliable data on which to found a judgment of its efficiency. The "papers" occasionally "laid before Parliament" on foreign questions of special interest, necessarily, perhaps, selected with reserve, appear generally compiled rather to conceal the action of our diplomacy and its agents than to lay it fairly open: they give, at all events, but a very superficial and restricted view of its operations. An intelligent study of even these, however, the now rather frequently provoked "explanations" of Ministers, the somewhat overflowing but not unimportant contributions of "our own correspondents, and other sources of information open to observers going to and fro on the Continent, afford a certain insight into the working of the system. From this, we think the conclusion is pretty clearly to be drawn, that, though our action in it has not been all too well directed, diplomacy has, and must for some time to come have its uses when exercised in a broad and enlightened spirit; and that our diplomatic agents abroad, while they might undoubtedly be better, are not so much at fault as the want of a rational, bold, and consistent foreign policy at home, and of Ministers capable of carrying it out.

Canning alone, of the Foreign Ministers of our times, has seemed actuated by any comprehensive and consistent principle of policy. He was the first who had a conception of the moral power of this country. Having struck out a line for himself, he heartily and spontaneously used publicity in the House of Commons as a lever on foreign cabinets. Had he been spared longer, he might, perhaps, have made their course clearer to his successors. We have only lately discovered what difficulties he had to contend with in his own court and cabinet, in baffling the arrogant pretensions of the other great powers. A well-informed public opinion did not then exist to support him; and he died before he could form one, or rather before it could form itself.

Lord Aberdeen, although well acquainted from one point of view with the affairs of Europe, moderate, and with great liberality of intelligence, was, by political feeling, sympathy, and personal relations, far too much bound up with the leading continental statesmen to take a broad or independent view of the position this country ought to assume, or to exert its influ

ence frankly in favour of the legitimate wants of the European communities, as opposed to the prejudices, passions, and fears, of their governments.

Lord Palmerston, originally raised to the position of Foreign Secretary more from his accidental command of French than from any intimate acquaintance with foreign men or things, and, later, reinstated in it by an influence to which it is not necessary to refer, endeavoured to take up Canning's cloak where it fell; but, with far greater advantages than Canning, was far less able to carry it; had far less genius, less initiative than his model. Bold, masterly, and occasionally successful as was his policy on some points, as a whole it was inconsistent and unsatisfactory. This, partly, because he never seemed to have formed for himself any comprehensive scheme, but rather to be animated by passionate prejudices on individual questions; partly because he was often baffled by the obstinacy or stupidity of his subordinate agents, whose sins he was almost too ready to take upon himself, but whose power to aid or to thwart him in his objects he always, in his overweening self-confidence, underrated; not a little because he was constantly obliged to sacrifice some important principle abroad to the difficulties of his position. at home, difficulties very greatly of his own creating. Canning used what public opinion he had in his day at command in furthering his action abroad. Lord Palmerston, to all appearance at least, made his action abroad too subservient to a kind of popularity at home. He never, like Canning, had the art of taking the House of Commons with him, Before it constantly, not unfrequently before his own Cabinet, he began by being on his defence, thereby greatly weakening his influence abroad; and this, too, when mainly right as to his objects, if wrong in the manner of carrying them out. Even when more seriously wrong, however, as in his restless interference in the internal affairs of other countries, he was not alone to blame; for, if rather obeying its hasty impulses than its higher sense, he was representing a large body of the gradually ripening public opinion of the day. With some great qualities, and many great faults, he undoubtedly did much to increase our influence abroad, and to bring the foreign policy of the country more into harmony with its interest and honour.

Lord Granville was chopped before he fairly broke cover, and my Lords Clarendon and Malmesbury, the one a wellmeaning bungler, the other a feeble finesser (to use no harder term), were but amiable administrators in Downing Streetscarcely Foreign Secretaries of England.

Lord John Russell has had the great advantage of having a better-informed and more defined public opinion to support-