The Economist.
Not long ago, I boarded an outbound ferry from Staten Island in New York.
The 25-minute trip takes you across the blue-gray waters of the city's harbor
to a terminal on the southern tip of Manhattan.
On your left, you pass Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.
Off in the distance to the right, you see the Brooklyn Bridge.
Out in front, the glass, steel, and granite towers of Lower Manhattan reach up to the sky.
The buildings are physically imposing, but that's not what draws me to this view.
It's what they stand for.
Because even if you've never been to New York, you've felt its pull,
maybe even imagined yourself inside it, like Ross and Rachel, Spider-Man, or Sinatra.
Approaching it via the water, it feels like a great and powerful civilization is opening its arms out to you.
On this trip, I stood on the passenger deck and took it all in.
But I wasn't here for the sightseeing.
I was on the trail of a long-dead hero of mine.
Here we are in New York.
From a Frenchman's perspective, it looks disarmingly weird.
There isn't a dome, steeple, or a large edifice in sight,
which leaves one with the impression that one has landed in a suburb, not the city itself.
Alexis de Tocqueville also arrived here by boat almost 200 years before me, in May 1831.