n in itself. It will accept
anything, give up anything, dare anything, to avoid civil war. Rather
than be divided between the two branches, it would have adhered to the
Empire. Now it can throw off the Bonapartes without occasioning a
disputed succession.'

'When you say,' I asked, 'that the Legitimists are not the successors of
the old aristocracy in cultivation, intelligence, or energy, do you mean
to ascribe to them positive or relative inferiority in these qualities?'

'In energy,' answered Tocqueville, 'their deficiency is positive. They
are ready to suffer for their cause, they are not ready to exert
themselves for it. In intelligence and cultivation they are superior to
any other class in France; but they are inferior to the English
aristocracy, and they are inferior, as I said before, to their ancestors
of the eighteenth century. There existed in the highest Parisian society
towards the end of that century a comprehensiveness of curiosity and
inquiry, a freedom of opinion, an independence, and soundness of
judgment, never seen before or since. Its pursuits, its pleasures, its
admirations, its vanities, were all intellectual. Look at the success of
Hume. His manners were awkward; he was a heavy, though an instructive,
converser; he spoke bad French; he would pass now for an intelligent
bore. But such was the worship then paid to talents and
knowledge--especially to knowledge, and talents employed on the
destruction of prejudices--that Hume was, for years, the lion of all the
salons of Paris. The fashionable beauties quarrelled for the fat
philosopher. Nor was their admiration or affection put on, or even
transitory. He retained some of them as intimate friends for life.
If the brilliant talkers and writers of that time were to return to life,
I do not believe that gas, or steam, or chloroform, or the electric
telegraph, would so much astonish them as the dulness of modern society,
and the mediocrity of modern books.'

In the evening we discussed the new scheme of throwing open the service
of India and of the Government offices to public competition.

'We have followed,' said Tocqueville, 'that system to a great extent for
many years. Our object was twofold. One was to depress the aristocracy of
wealth, birth, and connexions. In this we have succeeded.

The Ecole Polytechnique, and the other schools in which the vacancies are
given to those who pass the best examinations, are filled by youths
belonging to the