[Footnote 2:  That of the 28th May, 1855.—­ED.]

Tocqueville, September 19, 1855.

Your letter, my dear Senior, of the 26th of August, has much interested me.  I see that you are resolved on your great journey.  I could say like Alexander, if the comparison were not too ambitious, that I should wish to be in your place if I were not in my own; but I cannot get satiated with the pleasure of being at home after so long an absence.  Everything is pleasure in this country life, among my own fields.  Even the solitude is charming; but were I anywhere else, I should envy you your tour.

Everything in Egypt is curious:  the past, the present, and the future.  I hope to learn much from your Journal, which I trust that I shall have.  We shall certainly meet you in Paris.

The noise made by the fall of Sebastopol has echoed even to this distant corner of France.  It is a glorious event, and has delighted every Frenchman of every party and of every opinion, for in these matters we are one man.

I fear that the victory has been bought dearly.  There is not a neighbouring village to which the war has not cost some of its children.  But they bear it admirably.  You know, that in war we show the best side of our character.  If our civilians resembled our soldiers we should long ago have been masters of Europe.

This war has never been popular, nor is it popular, yet we bear all its cost with a cheerfulness admirable when you consider the sorrows which it occasions, aggravated by the distress produced by the dearness of bread.  If, instead of the Crimea, the seat of war had been the Rhine, with a definite purpose, the whole nation would have risen, as it has done before.

But the object of the war is unintelligible to the people.  They only know that France is at war, and must be made, at any price, to triumph.

I must confess, that I myself, who understand the object for which all this blood is shed, and who approve that object, do not feel the interest which such great events ought to excite; for I do not expect a result equal to the sacrifice.

I think, with you, that Russia is a great danger to Europe.  I think so more strongly, because I have had peculiar opportunities of studying the real sources of her power, and because I believe these sources to be permanent, and entirely beyond the reach of foreign attack. (I have not time now to tell you why.) But I am deeply convinced that it is not by taking from her a town, or even a province, nor by diplomatic precautions, still less by placing sentinels along her frontier, that the Western Powers will permanently stop her progress.

A temporary bulwark may be raised against her, but a mere accident may destroy it, or a change of alliances or a domestic policy may render it useless.

I am convinced that Russia can be stopped only by raising before her powers created by the hatred which she inspires, whose vital and constant interest it shall be to keep themselves united and to keep her in.  In other words, by the resurrection of Poland, and by the re-animation of Turkey.