I am _very_ sorry to lose the visit to Normandy, but I trust that it is only deferred.
We are grieved to hear that neither you nor Madame de Tocqueville are as well as your friends could wish you to be.
My _grippe_, after lasting for three months, has gradually subsided, and I look to the voyage to America as a cure for all remains of it.
I have most punctually carried your remembrances to all the persons honoured by being inscribed on your card.
Though I have often seen Gladstone, it has always been among many other persons, and he has been so full of talk, that I have never been able to allude to your subject. I mentioned it to Mrs. Gladstone on Saturday last: she said that there was not a person in all France whom her husband so much admired and venerated as you--therefore, if there was any appearance of neglect, it could have arisen only from hurry or mistake. I shall see him again on Thursday, when we are going all together to a rehearsal of Ristori's, and I will talk to him: we shall there be quiet.
Things here are in a very odd state. The Government is supported by the Tories because it calls itself Tory, and by the Whigs and Radicals because it obeys them. On such terms it may last for an indefinite time.
9 Hyde Park Gate, Kensington, August 2, 1858.
My dear Tocqueville,--I ought, as you know, to be on the Atlantic by this time; but I was attacked, ten days ago, with lumbar neuralgia, which they are trying, literally, to rub away. If I am quite well on the 13th, I shall go on the 14th to America.
I was attacked at Sir John Boileau's, where I spent some days with the Guizots, Mrs. Austin, and Stanley and Lord John Russell.
Guizot is in excellent spirits, and, what is rare in an ex-premier, dwells more on the present and the future than on the past. Mrs. Austin is placid and discursive.
Lord John seems to me well pleased with the present state of affairs--which he thinks, I believe with reason, will bring him back to power. He thinks that Malmesbury and Disraeli are doing well, and praises much the subordinates of the Government. Considering that no one believes Lord Derby to be wise, or Disraeli to be either wise or honest, it is marvellous that they get on as well as they do. The man who has risen most is Lord Stanley, and, as he has the inestimable advantage of youth, I believe him to be predestined to influence our fortunes long.