Poor Tocqueville is one day a little better, another a little worse; but I
have little or no hope of his getting through it.

Shortly after this Lord Brougham made a flying visit to London. A note in
the Journal is:--

_February 26th_.--I dined at Lord Brougham's, and met Dr. Lushington, Lord
Glenelg, Lord Broughton; all--with our host--over 80.

But the state of Tocqueville's health continued, for Reeve, the most
engrossing personal consideration, and just at this time the deadly malady
took a favourable though delusive turn. Tocqueville--says M. de Beaumont
[Footnote: Gustave de Beaumont: _Oeuvres et Correspondance inedites
d'Alexis de Tocqueville_ (1861), tome i. p. 116.]--hoped for the best.
'How could he do otherwise when all around him was bursting into life? and
so he kept on his regular habits, his schemes, his work. He read, and
was read to; he wrote a great many letters, and devoured those which he
received in great numbers. There was not one of his friends who did not
receive at least one letter from him during the last month of his life.'
The following is his last letter to Reeve. The writing is painfully bad,
the letters often half formed, or crowded one on top of another; even the
orthography is imperfect; but the words and ideas flow in full volume.

Cannes. le 25 fevrier.

Cher Reeve,--Il y a un siecle que je ne vous ai ecrit. Je n'etais pas libre
de le faire. Le mois de janvier tout entier s'est passe au milieu de la
crise la plus douloureuse. Je ne crois pas qu'il y ait aucun mois de ma
vie qui merite mieux que celui-la d'etre marque d'une croix noire dans