Amerique" are much
inferior to the first. In the latter, he sketched out with a master
hand, when fresh from the object of his study, the practical working of
democratic institutions, when entirely free from all the impediments
which, it was alleged, concealed or thwarted their operation in the Old
World. He delineated the results of the republican principle in a new
state, without a hereditary nobility, established church, or national
debt; unfettered by primogeniture, pauperism, or previous misgovernment;
surrounded by boundless lands of exceeding fertility, with all the
powers of European knowledge to bring them into cultivation, and all the
energy of the Anglo-Saxon race to carry out the mission of Japhet--to
replenish the earth and subdue it. The world had never seen, probably
the world will never again see, the democratic principle launched into
activity under such favourable circumstances, and when its practical
effect, for good or for evil, could with so much accuracy and certainty
be discerned. The study and delineation of such an experiment, in such
circumstances, and on such a scale, by a competent observer, must have
been an object of the highest interest at any time; but what must it be
when that observer is a man of the capacity and judgment of M. De
Tocqueville?

The latter volumes of the same work, however, have dipped into more
doubtful matters, and have brought forward more questionable opinions.
The inquisitive mind, philosophic turn, and deep reflection of the
author, indeed, are every where conspicuous; but his opinions do not
equally as in the first two volumes bear the signet mark of truth
stamped upon them. They are more speculative and fanciful; founded
rather on contemplation of future, than observation of present effects.
When De Tocqueville painted the unrestrained working of democracy on
political thought and parties, as he saw it around him in the course of
his residence in America, he drew a picture which all, in circumstances
at all similar, must at once have recognised as trustworthy, because it
was only an extension of what they had witnessed in their own vicinity.
But when he extended these effects so far as he has done in his later
volumes, to manners, opinions, habits, and the intercourse of the sexes,
the attempt seemed overstrained. The theory, beyond all question just to
a certain point, was pushed too far. M. De Tocqueville's great
reputation, accordingly, has been somewhat impai