George Ticknor, Life, letters and journals of George Ticknor
George Hillard, Ed.

[105] this was the first time M. Guizot had seen the de Broglie family for several months. At table he talked more like a statesman, on the French elections now approaching, and on American politics. He treated Mr. Van Buren, compared with the other Presidents of the United States, as a person not known in Europe. But on American affairs the Duke de Broglie seemed better informed, and talked better than he did. . . . .

October 8.—Gans of Berlin came in early this morning to see me, full of activity and lively conversation as ever. He has been travelling in the South of France, to restore himself after a considerable illness, and seems very round and hearty, as if the experiment had quite succeeded . . . .

October 9.—I visited Guizot this morning. He is poor, and lives very modestly in a small apartment, where it would be quite impossible for him to receive fashionable company; but I believe that he has never sought to make a fortune, and that, being without debts, he is contented. He was very curious this morning in his inquiries about the United States, and showed that he has ceased to believe in the stability of our popular institutions. It was not so formerly. He professes to be very anxious on the subject; to consider it a great calamity to the world if the experiment of liberty in the United States should fail; is much concerned about our mobs, the question of slavery, etc. But if he talked the other day, at the Duke de Broglie's, like an homme d'esprit and like a statesman, he talked this morning like a politician. . . . .

In the evening we went to Mad. de Broglie's. Though she does not receive regularly, a good many persons came in, most of them men of letters, or men marked by intellectual endowments. I was particularly glad to see Ste. Beuve, a modest little gentleman of about fifty-five; for if I had not seen him now, I should have missed him altogether, as he is just going for the winter to Lausanne. No man alive has so good a knowledge of French literature in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as he has; and I obtained some good indications from him this evening, which will make me regret his absence this winter the more.

October 16.—Mad. de Broglie made us a long visit this morning, and talked politics and religion in abundance, which it was agreeable to listen to, because she is so frank and sincere, but in which it is not possible for me to agree with her, because she is so Calvinistic, and looks with so much less favor than she used to on free institutions. . . . .