as caused no public excitement
The truth is that just now we are not _excitable_. As long as she remains
in this condition France will not strike one of those blows by which she
sometimes shakes Europe and overturns herself.

Reeve has been and Milnes still is here. We have talked much of you with
these two old friends. Good bye, or rather, thank God, _a bientot_.

A thousand kind remembrances to Mrs. Senior.

A. DE TOCQUEVILLE.

[Footnote 1: Mr. Senior was on his return from Egypt.--ED.]

[Footnote 2: The _Ancien Regime_.]

CONVERSATIONS.

_Paris, May_ 16.--M. de Tocqueville has scarcely been visible since my
return to Paris. Madame de Tocqueville has been absent. She returned
yesterday, and they spent this evening with us.

Tocqueville is full of his book, which is to appear in about a week. His
days and nights are devoted to correcting the press and to writing
notes--which he thought would be trifling, but which grow in length and
importance.

The object of the work is to account for the rapid progress of the
Revolution, to point out the principal causes which enabled a few
comparatively obscure men to overthrow in six weeks a Monarchy of many
centuries.

'I am inclined,' I said, 'to attribute the rapidity with which the old
institutions of France fell, to the fact that there was no _lex loci_ in
France. That the laws, or rather the customs, of the different provinces
were dissimilar, and that nothing was defined. That as soon as the
foundations or the limits of any power were examined, it crumbled to
pieces; so that the Assembly became omnipotent in the absence of any
authority with ascertained rights and jurisdiction.'

'There is much truth in that,' answered Tocqueville, 'but there is also
much truth in what looks like an opposite theory--namely, that the
Monarchy fell because its power was too extensive and too absolute.
Nothing is so favourable to revolution as centralisation, because whoever
can seize the central point is obeyed down to the extremities. Now the
centralisation of France under the old Monarchy, though not so complete
as its Democratic and Imperial tyrants afterwards made it, was great.
Power was concentrated in Paris and in the provincial capitals. The
smaller towns and the agricultural population were unorganised and
defenceless. The 14th of July revealed the terrible secret that the
Master of Paris is the Master of France.'

_Paris, May_ 18.--I spent the day at Athy, the co