Tocqueville and Beaumont in America

[Oxford University Press, $7,50]

THE second generation of Americans born under the Stars and Stripes were growing old when two young French aristocrats, charming in manner and of open mind, came to study our prison system, then thought the most enlightened in the world. Their insatiate curiosity in a brave new world outgrew the confines of their inquiry. They saw everybody, traveled everywhere, and set down everything they saw and heard. The resulting book, De la Democratic dans les États-Unis. has been world-famous for a hundred years, but these newly discovered letters and journals, the living record from which it was created, are in many ways more stimulating and suggestive than the great book itself.

The spirit of prophecy dwelt in de Tocqueville, and his horoscope of the long future of the Republic surpasses in interest the speculations of every other philosopher who has devoted himself to the subject, even of Bryce himself. But, pondering these shrewd speculations, the American of to-day cannot but reflect upon the instabilities as well as on the constants of our national character. Chief among our positive characteristics de Tocqueville places our natural obedience to law, our unique morality, and our undeviating devotion to the pursuit of money. The Root of all Evil is a persistent incentive. In a hundred years of history how enormously has this fundamental American passion outdistanced the other two!

For all their sprightliness, the journals are serious reading, but a book more valuable for the education of Americans it would be hard to find.

E. S.