The broken arm alluded to at the close of this letter was caused by an accident which Mr. Jefferson met with towards the close of the year 1822. While descending a flight of steps leading from one of the terraces at Monticello, a decayed plank gave way and threw him forward at full length on the ground. To a man in his eightieth year such a fall might have been fatal, and Jefferson was fortunate in escaping with a broken arm, though it gave him much pain at the time, and was a serious inconvenience to him during the few remaining years of his life. Though debarred from his usual daily exercise on horseback for a short time after the accident occurred, he resumed his rides while his arm was yet in a sling. His favorite riding-horse, Eagle, was brought up to the terrace, whence he mounted while in this disabled state. Eagle, though a spirited Virginia full-blood, seemed instinctively to know that his venerable master was an invalid; for, usually restless and spirited, he on these occasions stood as quietly as a lamb, and, leaning up towards the terrace, seemed to wish to aid the crippled octogenarian as he mounted into the saddle.

I make the following extracts from a letter full of interest, written to Judge Johnson, of South Carolina, early in the summer of 1823. He writes:

To Judge Johnson.

What a treasure will be found in General Washington's cabinet, when it shall pass into the hands of as candid a friend to truth as he was himself!...

With respect to his [Washington's] Farewell Address, to the authorship of which, it seems, there are conflicting claims, I can state to you some facts. He had determined to decline a re-election at the end of his first term, and so far determined, that he had requested Mr. Madison to prepare for him something valedictory, to be addressed to his constituents on his retirement. This was done: but he was finally persuaded to acquiesce in a second election, to which no one more strenuously pressed him than myself, from a conviction of the importance of strengthening, by longer habit, the respect necessary for that office, which the weight of his character only could effect. When, at the end of this second term, his Valedictory came out, Mr. Madison recognized in it several passages of his draught; several others, we were both satisfied, were from the pen of Hamilton; and others from that of the President himself. These he probably put into the hands of Hamilton to form into a whole, and hence it may all appear in Hamilton's handwriting, as if it were all of his composition....

The close of my second sheet warns me that it is time now to relieve you from this letter of unmerciful length. Indeed, I wonder how I have accomplished it, with two crippled wrists, the one scarcely able to move my pen, the other to hold my paper. But I am hurried sometimes beyond the sense of pain, when unbosoming myself to friends who harmonize with me in principle. You and I may differ occasionally in details of minor consequence, as no two minds, more than two faces, are the same in every feature. But our general objects are the same—to preserve the republican forms and principles of our Constitution, and cleave to the salutary distribution of powers which that has established. These are the two sheet-anchors of our Union. If driven from either, we shall be in danger of foundering. To my prayers for its safety and perpetuity, I add those for the continuation of your health, happiness, and usefulness to your country.

Towards the close of the year 1823 he wrote a long letter to Lafayette, the following extracts from which show how well he felt the infirmities of old age advancing upon him:

To the Marquis de Lafayette.—[Extracts.]

Monticello, November 4th, 1823.

My dear Friend—Two dislocated wrists and crippled fingers have rendered writing so slow and laborious, as to oblige me to withdraw from nearly all correspondence—not however, from yours, while I can make a stroke with a pen. We have gone through too many trying scenes together to forget the sympathies and affections they nourished....

After much sickness, and the accident of a broken and disabled arm, I am again in tolerable health, but extremely debilitated, so as to be scarcely able to walk into my garden. The hebetude of age, too, and extinguishment of interest in the things around me, are weaning me from them, and dispose me with cheerfulness to resign them to the existing generation, satisfied that the daily advance of science will enable them to administer the commonwealth with increased wisdom. You have still many valuable years to give to your country, and with my prayers that they may be years of health and happiness, and especially that they may see the establishment of the principles of government which you have cherished through life, accept the assurance of my constant friendship and respect.

Early in the following year, in a reply to a request of Isaac Engelbrecht that he would send him something from his own hand, he writes: "Knowing nothing more moral, more sublime, more worthy of your preservation than David's description of the good man, in his 15th Psalm, I will here transcribe it from Brady and Tate's version:" he then gives the Psalm in full.