The loss of Mr. Jefferson is one over which the whole world will mourn. He was one of those ornaments and benefactors of the human race whose death forms an epoch and creates a sensation throughout the whole circle of civilized man. But that feeling is nothing to what those feel who are connected with him by blood,[82] and bound to him by gratitude for a thousand favors. To me he has been more than a father, and I have ever loved and revered him with my whole heart.... Taken as a whole, history presents nothing so grand, so beautiful, so peculiarly felicitous in all the great points, as the life and character of Thomas Jefferson.
After Mr. Jefferson's death there were found in a drawer in his room, among other souvenirs, some little packages containing locks of the hair of his deceased wife, daughter, and even the infant children that he had lost. These relics are now lying before me. They are labelled in his own handwriting. One, marked "A lock of our first Lucy's hair, with some of my dear, dear wife's writing," contains a few strands of soft, silk-like hair evidently taken from the head of a very young infant. Another, marked simply "Lucy," contains a beautiful golden curl.
Among his papers there were found written on the torn back of an old letter the following directions for his monument and its inscription:
Could the dead feel any interest in monuments or other remembrances of them, when, as Anacreon says,
Ὀλίγη δὲ κεισόμεθα
Κόνις, ὁστέων λυθέντων,
the following would be to my manes the most gratifying: on the grave a plain die or cube of three feet without any mouldings, surmounted by an obelisk of six feet height, each of a single stone; on the faces of the obelisk the following inscription, and not a word more:
HERE WAS BURIED
THOMAS JEFFERSON,
Author of the Declaration of American Independence,
Of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom,
And Father of the University of Virginia;because by these, as testimonials that I have lived, I wish most to be remembered. [It] to be of the coarse stone of which my columns are made, that no one might be tempted hereafter to destroy it for the value of the materials. My bust, by Ceracchi, with the pedestal and truncated column on which it stands, might be given to the University, if they would place it in the dome room of the Rotunda. On the die of the obelisk might be engraved:
Born Apr. 2, 1743, O. S.
Died —— —— ——.
Folded up in the same paper which contained these directions was a scrap on which was written the dates and inscription for Mrs. Jefferson's tomb, which I have already given at [page 64] of this book.
Jefferson's efforts to save his monument from mutilation by having it made of coarse stone have been futile. His grandson, Colonel Randolph, followed his directions in erecting the monument which is placed over him. He lies buried between his wife and his daughter, Mary Eppes: across the head of these three graves lie the remains of his eldest daughter, Martha Randolph. This group lies in front of a gap in the high brick wall which surrounds the whole grave-yard, the gap being filled by a high iron grating, giving a full view of the group, that there might be no excuse for forcing open the high iron gates which close the entrance to the grave-yard. But all precautions have been in vain. The gates have been again and again broken open, the grave-yard entered, and the tombs desecrated. The edges of the granite obelisk over Jefferson's grave have been chipped away until it now stands a misshapen column. Of the slabs placed over the graves of Mrs. Jefferson and Mrs. Eppes not a vestige remains, while of the one over Mrs. Randolph only fragments are left.
GRAVE OF JEFFERSON, A.D. 1850.