'We have a name for those who have been thus educated. They are called
"polytechnises." If you follow our example, you will increase your
second-rates, and extinguish your first-rates; and what is perhaps a more
important result, whether you consider it a good or an evil, you will
make a large stride in the direction in which you have lately made so
many--the removing the government and the administration of England from
the hands of the higher classes into those of the middle and lower ones.'
CORRESPONDENCE.
Paris, Sunday, May 14, 1854.
My dear Tocqueville,--I write to you _in meditatione fugae_. We start for
England in an hour's time. The last news that I heard of you was the day
before yesterday from Cousin. He read me your letter, which sounded to me
like that of a man in not very bad health or hopes. I trust that the
attack of which Madame de Tocqueville wrote to us has quite passed off.
Thiers, who asked very anxiously after you to-day, is earnest that you
should be present at the election on the 18th. The Academy, he said, is
very jealous. _Vous serez tres-mal vu_, if you do not come.
You are at last going seriously to work in the war.
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