THOMAS JEFFERSON.
From Portrait by Gilbert Stuart.

MONTICELLO:—THE WESTERN FRONT.

THE DOMESTIC LIFE
OF
THOMAS JEFFERSON.

COMPILED FROM
FAMILY LETTERS AND REMINISCENCES,

BY HIS GREAT-GRANDDAUGHTER,
SARAH N. RANDOLPH.

NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
FRANKLIN SQUARE.
1871.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by
Harper & Brothers,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

PREFACE.

I do not in this volume write of Jefferson either as of the great man or as of the statesman. My object is only to give a faithful picture of him as he was in private life—to show that he was, as I have been taught to think of him by those who knew and loved him best, a beautiful domestic character. With this view I have collected the reminiscences of him which have been written by his daughter and grandchildren. From his correspondence, published and unpublished, I have culled his family letters, and here reproduce them as being the most faithful witnesses of the warmth of his affections, the elevation of his character, and the scrupulous fidelity with which he discharged the duties of every relation in life.

I am well aware that the tale of Jefferson's life, both public and private, has been well told by the most faithful of biographers in "Randall's Life of Jefferson," and that much of what is contained in these pages will be found in that admirable work, which, from the author's zealous devotion to truth, and his indefatigable industry in collecting his materials, must ever stand chief among the most valuable contributions to American history. I propose, however, to give a sketch of Jefferson's private life in a briefer form than it can be found in either the thirteen volumes of the two editions of his published correspondence, or in the three stout octavo volumes of his Life by Randall. To give a bird's-eye view of his whole career, and to preserve unbroken the thread of this narrative, I quote freely from his Memoir, and from such of his letters as cast any light upon the subject, filling up the blanks with my own pen.

Jefferson's executor having a few months ago recovered from the United States Government his family letters and private papers, which had been exempted from the sale of his public manuscripts, I am enabled to give in these pages many interesting letters never before published.

No man's private character has been more foully assailed than Jefferson's, and none so wantonly exposed to the public gaze, nor more fully vindicated. I shall be more than rewarded for my labors should I succeed in imparting to my readers a tithe of that esteem and veneration which I have been taught to feel for him by the person with whom he was most intimate during life—the grandson who, as a boy, played upon his knee, and, as a man, was, as he himself spoke of him, "the staff" of his old age.

The portrait of Jefferson is from a painting by Gilbert Stuart, in the possession of his family, and by them considered as the best likeness of him. The portrait of his daughter, Martha Jefferson Randolph, is from a painting by Sully. The view of Monticello represents the home of Jefferson as it existed during his lifetime, and not as it now is—a ruin.

THE AUTHOR.

June, 1871.

CONTENTS.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

THE
DOMESTIC LIFE OF JEFFERSON.

[CHAPTER I.]

Jefferson's Birthplace.—Sketch of his early Life.—Character of his Parents.—His Grandfather, Isham Randolph.—Peter Jefferson's Friendship for William Randolph.—Randolph dies, and leaves his young Son to the Guardianship of Jefferson.—His faithful Discharge of the Trust.—Thomas Jefferson's earliest Recollections.—His Father's Hospitality.—First Acquaintance with Indians.—Life of the early Settlers of Virginia: its Ease and Leisure.—Expense of Thomas Jefferson's early Education.—Death of his Father.—Perils of his Situation.—Letter to his Guardian.—Goes to William and Mary College.—Extract from his Memoir.—Sketch of Fauquier.—Of Wythe.

On a long, gently sloping hill five miles east of Charlottesville, Virginia, the traveller, passing along the county road of Albemarle, has pointed out to him the spot where Thomas Jefferson was born, April 13th, 1743. A few aged locust-trees are still left to mark the place, and two or three sycamores stretch out their long majestic arms over the greensward beneath, once the scene of young Jefferson's boyish games, but now a silent pasture, where cattle and sheep browse, undisturbed by the proximity of any dwelling. The trees are all that are left of an avenue planted by him on his twenty-first birthday, and, as such, are objects of peculiar interest to those who love to dwell upon the associations of the past.

The situation is one well suited for a family mansion—offering from its site a landscape view rarely surpassed. To the south are seen the picturesque valley and banks of the Rivanna, with an extensive, peaceful-looking horizon view, lying like a sleeping beauty, in the east; while long rolling hills, occasionally rising into mountain ranges until at last they are all lost in the gracefully-sweeping profile of the Blue Ridge, stretch westward, and the thickly-wooded Southwest Mountains, with the highly-cultivated fields and valleys intervening, close the scene on the north, and present landscapes whose exquisite enchantment must ever charm the beholder.

A brief sketch of Jefferson's family and early life is given in the following quotation from his Memoir, written by himself:

January 6, 1821.—At the age of 77, I begin to make some memoranda, and state some recollections of dates and facts concerning myself, for my own more ready reference, and for the information of my family.

The tradition in my father's family was, that their ancestor came to this country from Wales, and from near the mountain of Snowden, the highest in Great Britain. I noted once a case from Wales in the law reports, where a person of our name was either plaintiff or defendant; and one of the same name was Secretary to the Virginia Company. These are the only instances in which I have met with the name in that country. I have found it in our early records; but the first particular information I have of any ancestor was of my grandfather, who lived at the place in Chesterfield called Osborne's, and owned the lands afterwards the glebe of the parish. He had three sons: Thomas, who died young; Field, who settled on the waters of the Roanoke, and left numerous descendants; and Peter, my father, who settled on the lands I still own, called Shadwell, adjoining my present residence. He was born February 29th, 1708, and intermarried 1739 with Jane Randolph, of the age of 19, daughter of Isham Randolph, one of the seven sons of that name and family settled at Dungeness, in Goochland. They trace their pedigree far back in England and Scotland, to which let every one ascribe the faith and merit he chooses.

My father's education had been quite neglected; but being of a strong mind, sound judgment, and eager after information, he read much, and improved himself; insomuch that he was chosen, with Joshua Fry, Professor of Mathematics in William and Mary College, to run the boundary-line between Virginia and North Carolina, which had been begun by Colonel Byrd, and was afterwards employed with the same Mr. Fry to make the first map of Virginia which had ever been made, that of Captain Smith being merely a conjectural sketch. They possessed excellent materials for so much of the country as is below the Blue Ridge, little being then known beyond that ridge. He was the third or fourth settler, about the year 1737, of the part of the country in which I live. He died August 17th, 1757, leaving my mother a widow, who lived till 1776, with six daughters and two sons, myself the elder.

To my younger brother he left his estate on James River, called Snowden, after the supposed birthplace of the family; to myself, the lands on which I was born and live. He placed me at the English school at five years of age, and at the Latin at nine, where I continued until his death. My teacher, Mr. Douglas, a clergyman from Scotland, with the rudiments of the Latin and Greek languages, taught me the French; and on the death of my father I went to the Rev. Mr. Maury, a correct classical scholar, with whom I continued two years.

The talents of great men are frequently said to be derived from the mother. If they are inheritable, Jefferson was entitled to them on both the paternal and maternal side. His father was a man of most extraordinary vigor, both of mind and body. His son never wearied of dwelling with all the pride of filial devotion and admiration on the noble traits of his character. To the regular duties of his vocation as a land-surveyor (which, it will be remembered, was the profession of Washington also) were added those of county surveyor, colonel of the militia, and member of the House of Burgesses.

Family tradition has preserved several incidents of the survey of the boundary-line between Virginia and North Carolina, which prove him to have been a man of remarkable powers of endurance, untiring energy, and indomitable courage. The perils and toils of running that line across the Blue Ridge were almost incredible, and were not surpassed by those encountered by Colonel Byrd and his party in forcing the same line through the forests and marshes of the Dismal Swamp in the year 1728. On this expedition Colonel Jefferson and his companions had often to defend themselves against the attacks of wild beasts during the day, and at night found but a broken rest, sleeping—as they were obliged to do for safety—in trees. At length their supply of provisions began to run low, and his comrades, overcome by hunger and exhaustion, fell fainting beside him. Amid all these hardships and difficulties, Jefferson's courage did not once flag, but living upon raw flesh, or whatever could be found to sustain life, he pressed on and persevered until his task was accomplished.

So great was his physical strength, that when standing between two hogsheads of tobacco lying on their sides, he could raise or "head" them both up at once. Perhaps it was because he himself rejoiced in such gigantic strength that it was his frequent remark that "it is the strong in body who are both the strong and free in mind." This, too, made him careful to have his young son early instructed in all the manly sports and exercises of his day; so that while still a school-boy he was a good rider, a good swimmer, and an ardent sportsman, spending hours and days wandering in pursuit of game along the sides of the beautiful Southwest Mountains—thus strengthening his body and his health, which must otherwise have given way under the intense application to study to which he soon afterwards devoted himself.

The Jeffersons were among the earliest immigrants to the colony, and we find the name in the list of the twenty-two members who composed the Assembly that met in Jamestown in the year 1619—the first legislative body that was ever convened in America.[1] Colonel Jefferson's father-in-law, Isham Randolph, of Dungeness, was a man of considerable eminence in the colony, whose name associated itself in his day with all that was good and wise. In the year 1717 he married, in London, Jane Rogers. Possessing the polished and courteous manners of a gentleman of the colonial days, with a well-cultivated intellect, and a heart in which every thing that is noble and true was instinctive, he charmed and endeared himself to all who were thrown into his society. He devoted much time to the study of science; and we find the following mention of him in a quaint letter from Peter Collinson, of London, to Bartram, the naturalist, then on the eve of visiting Virginia to study her flora:

When thee proceeds home, I know no person who will make thee more welcome than Isham Randolph. He lives thirty or forty miles above the falls of James River, in Goochland, above the other settlements. Now, I take his house to be a very suitable place to make a settlement at, for to take several days' excursions all round, and to return to his house at night.... One thing I must desire of thee, and do insist that thee must oblige me therein: that thou make up that drugget clothes, to go to Virginia in, and not appear to disgrace thyself or me; for though I should not esteem thee the less to come to me in what dress thou wilt, yet these Virginians are a very gentle, well-dressed people, and look, perhaps, more at a man's outside than his inside. For these and other reasons, pray go very clean, neat, and handsomely-dressed to Virginia. Never mind thy clothes; I will send thee more another year.

In reply to Bartram's account of the kind welcome which he received from Isham Randolph, he writes: "As for my friend Isham, who I am also personally known to, I did not doubt his civility to thee. I only wish I had been there and shared it with thee." Again, after Randolph's death, he writes to Bartram that "the good man is gone to his long home, and, I doubt not, is happy."

Such was Jefferson's maternal grandfather. His mother, from whom he inherited his cheerful and hopeful temper and disposition, was a woman of a clear and strong understanding, and, in every respect, worthy of the love of such a man as Peter Jefferson.

Isham Randolph's nephew, Colonel William Randolph, of Tuckahoe, was Peter Jefferson's most intimate friend. A pleasing incident preserved in the family records proves how warm and generous their friendship was. Two or three days before Jefferson took out a patent for a thousand acres of land on the Rivanna River, Randolph had taken out one for twenty-four hundred acres adjoining. Jefferson, not finding a good site for a house on his land, his friend sold him four hundred acres of his tract, the price paid for these four hundred acres being, as the deed still in the possession of the family proves, "Henry Weatherbourne's biggest bowl of arrack punch."

Colonel Jefferson called his estate "Shadwell," after the parish in England where his wife was born, while Randolph's was named "Edgehill," in honor of the field on which the Cavaliers and Roundheads first crossed swords. By an intermarriage between their grandchildren, these two estates passed into the possession of descendants common to them both, in whose hands they have been preserved down to the present day.

On the four hundred acres thus added by Jefferson to his original patent, he erected a plain weather-boarded house, to which he took his young bride immediately after his marriage, and where they remained until the death of Colonel William Randolph, of Tuckahoe, in 1745.

It was the dying request of Colonel Randolph, that his friend Peter Jefferson should undertake the management of his estates and the guardianship of his young son, Thomas Mann Randolph. Being unable to fulfill this request while living at Shadwell, Colonel Jefferson removed his family to Tuckahoe, and remained there seven years, sacredly guarding, like a Knight of the Round Table, the solemn charge intrusted to him, without any other reward than the satisfaction of fully keeping the promise made to his dying friend. That he refused to receive any other compensation for his services as guardian is not only proved by the frequent assertion of his son in after years, but by his accounts as executor, which have ever remained unchallenged.[2]

Thomas Jefferson was not more than two years old when his father moved to Tuckahoe, yet he often declared that his earliest recollection in life was of being, on that occasion, handed up to a servant on horseback, by whom he was carried on a pillow for a long distance. He also remembered that later, when five years old, he one day became impatient for his school to be out, and, going out, knelt behind the house, and there repeated the Lord's Prayer, hoping thereby to hurry up the desired hour.

Colonel Jefferson's house at Shadwell was near the public highway, and in those days of primitive hospitality was the stopping-place for all passers-by, and, in the true spirit of Old Virginia hospitality, was thrown open to every guest. Here, too, the great Indian Chiefs stopped, on their journeys to and from the colonial capital, and it was thus that young Jefferson first became acquainted with and interested in them and their people. More than half a century later we find him writing to John Adams:

I know much of the great Ontasseté, the warrior and orator of the Cherokees; he was always the guest of my father on his journeys to and from Williamsburg. I was in his camp when he made his great farewell oration to his people, the evening before his departure for England. The moon was in full splendor, and to her he seemed to address himself in his prayers for his own safety on the voyage, and that of his people during his absence; his sounding voice, distinct articulation, animated action, and the solemn silence of his people at their several fires, filled me with awe and veneration.

The lives led by our forefathers were certainly filled with ease and leisure. One of Thomas Jefferson's grandsons asked him, on one occasion, how the men of his father's day spent their time. He smiled, and, in reply, said, "My father had a devoted friend, to whose house he would go, dine, spend the night, dine with him again on the second day, and return to Shadwell in the evening. His friend, in the course of a day or two, returned the visit, and spent the same length of time at his house. This occurred once every week; and thus, you see, they were together four days out of the seven."

This is, perhaps, a fair picture of the ease and leisure of the life of an old Virginian, and to the causes which produced this style of life was due, also, the great hospitality for which Virginians have ever been so renowned. The process of farming was then so simple that the labor and cultivation of an estate were easily and most profitably carried on by an overseer and the slaves, the master only riding occasionally over his plantation to see that his general orders were executed.

In the school of such a life, however, were reared and developed the characters of the men who rose to such eminence in the struggles of the Revolution, and who, as giants in intellect and virtue, must ever be a prominent group among the great historical characters of the world. Their devotion to the chase, to horsemanship, and to all the manly sports of the day, and the perils and adventures to be encountered in a new country, developed their physical strength, and inspired them with that bold and dashing spirit which still characterizes their descendants, while the leisure of their lives gave them time to devote to study and reflection.

The city of Williamsburg, being the capital of the colony and the residence of the governor, was the seat of intelligence, refinement, and elegance, and offered every advantage for social intercourse. There it was that those graceful manners were formed which made men belonging to the old colonial school so celebrated for the cordial ease and courtesy of their address. As there were no large towns in the colony, the inducements and temptations offered for the accumulation of wealth were few, while the abundance of the good things of the earth found on his own plantation rendered the Virginian lavish in his expenditures, and hence his unbounded hospitality. Of this we have ample proof in the accounts which have been handed down to us of their mode of life. Thomas Mann Randolph, of Tuckahoe, it is said, consumed annually a thousand barrels of corn at his family stable; while the princely abode of Colonel Byrd, of Westover, with its offices, covered a space of two acres. The prices of corn were what seem to us now fabulously low. The old chroniclers tell us that one year the price rose to the enormous sum of thirty-three cents a bushel, and that year was ever after known as the "ten-shilling year"—ten shillings being the price per barrel.

In looking over Colonel Peter Jefferson's account-books, one can not refrain from smiling to see the small amount paid for his young son's school education. To the Rev. William Douglas he paid sixteen pounds sterling per annum for his board and tuition, and Mr. Maury received for the same twenty pounds. Colonel Jefferson's eagerness for information was inherited to an extraordinary degree by his son, who early evinced that thirst for knowledge which he preserved to the day of his death. He made rapid progress in his studies, and soon became a proficient in mathematics and the classics. In after years he used often to say, that had he to decide between the pleasure derived from the classical education which his father had given him and the estate he had left him, he would decide in favor of the former.

Jefferson's father died, as we have seen, when he was only fourteen years old. The perils and wants of his situation, deprived as he was so early in life of the guidance and influence of such a father, were very touchingly described by him years afterwards, in a letter written to his eldest grandson,[3] when the latter was sent from home to school for the first time. He writes:

When I recollect that at fourteen years of age the whole care and direction of myself was thrown on myself entirely, without a relative or friend qualified to advise or guide me, and recollect the various sorts of bad company with which I associated from time to time, I am astonished that I did not turn off with some of them, and become as worthless to society as they were. I had the good-fortune to become acquainted very early with some characters of very high standing, and to feel the incessant wish that I could ever become what they were. Under temptations and difficulties, I would ask myself—What would Dr. Small, Mr. Wythe, Peyton Randolph, do in this situation? What course in it will insure me their approbation? I am certain that this mode of deciding on my conduct tended more to correctness than any reasoning powers I possessed. Knowing the even and dignified lives they pursued, I could never doubt for a moment which of two courses would be in character for them; whereas, seeking the same object through a process of moral reasoning, and with the jaundiced eye of youth, I should often have erred. From the circumstances of my position, I was often thrown into the society of horse-racers, card-players, fox-hunters, scientific and professional men, and of dignified men; and many a time have I asked myself, in the enthusiastic moment of the death of a fox, the victory of a favorite horse, the issue of a question eloquently argued at the bar, or in the great council of the nation, Well, which of these kinds of reputation should I prefer—that of a horse-jockey, a fox-hunter, an orator, or the honest advocate of my country's rights? Be assured, my dear Jefferson, that these little returns into ourselves, this self-catechising habit, is not trifling nor useless, but leads to the prudent selection and steady pursuit of what is right.

After leaving Mr. Maury's school, we find him writing the following letter to a gentleman who was at the time his guardian. It was written when he was seventeen years old, and is the earliest production which we have from his pen:

Shadwell, January 14th, 1760.

Sir—I was at Colo. Peter Randolph's about a fortnight ago, and my Schooling falling into Discourse, he said he thought it would be to my Advantage to go to the College, and was desirous I should go, as indeed I am myself for several Reasons. In the first place as long as I stay at the Mountain, the loss of one fourth of my Time is inevitable, by Company's coming here and detaining me from School. And likewise my Absence will in a great measure, put a Stop to so much Company, and by that Means lessen the Expenses of the Estate in House-keeping. And on the other Hand by going to the College, I shall get a more universal Acquaintance, which may hereafter be serviceable to me; and I suppose I can pursue my Studies in the Greek and Latin as well there as here, and likewise learn something of the Mathematics. I shall be glad of your opinion, and remain, Sir, your most humble servant,

THOMAS JEFFERSON JR:

To Mr. John Hervey, at Bellemont.

We find no traces, in the above school-boy's letter, of the graceful pen which afterwards won for its author so high a rank among the letter-writers of his own, or, indeed, of any day.

It was decided that he should go to William and Mary College, and thither he accordingly went, in the year 1760. We again quote from his Memoir, to give a glance at this period of his life:

It was my great good-fortune, and what, perhaps, fixed the destinies of my life, that Dr. William Small, of Scotland, was the Professor of Mathematics, a man profound in most of the useful branches of science, with a happy talent of communication, correct and gentlemanly manners, and an enlarged and liberal mind. He, most happily for me, became soon attached to me, and made me his daily companion, when not engaged in the school; and from his conversation I got my first views of the expansion of science, and of the system of things in which we are placed. Fortunately, the philosophical chair became vacant soon after my arrival at college, and he was appointed to fill it per interim; and he was the first who ever gave, in that college, regular lectures in Ethics, Rhetoric, and Belles Lettres. He returned to Europe in 1762, having previously filled up the measure of his goodness to me, by procuring for me, from his most intimate friend, George Wythe, a reception as a student of law under his direction, and introduced me to the acquaintance and familiar table of Governor Fauquier, the ablest man who had ever filled that office. With him and at his table, Dr. Small and Mr. Wythe, his amici omnium horarum, and myself formed a partie quarrée, and to the habitual conversations on these occasions I owed much instruction. Mr. Wythe continued to be my faithful and beloved mentor in youth, and my most affectionate friend through life.

There must indeed have been some very great charm and attraction about the young student of seventeen, to have won for him the friendship and esteem of such a profound scholar as Small, and a seat at the family table of the elegant and accomplished Fauquier.

We have just quoted Jefferson's finely-drawn character of Small, and give now the following brilliant but sad picture, as drawn by the Virginia historian, Burke, of the able and generous Fauquier, and of the vices which he introduced into the colony:

With some allowance, he was every thing that could have been wished for by Virginia under a royal government. Generous, liberal, elegant in his manners and acquirements; his example left an impression of taste, refinement and erudition on the character of the colony, which eminently contributed to its present high reputation in the arts. It is stated, on evidence sufficiently authentic, that on the return of Anson from his circumnavigation of the earth, he accidentally fell in with Fauquier, from whom, in a single night's play, he won at cards the whole of his patrimony; that afterwards, being captivated by the striking graces of this gentleman's person and conversation, he procured for him the government of Virginia. Unreclaimed by the former subversion of his fortune, he introduced the same fatal propensity to gaming into Virginia; and the example of so many virtues and accomplishments, alloyed but by a single vice, was but too successful in extending the influence of this pernicious and ruinous practice. He found among the people of his new government a character compounded of the same elements as his own; and he found little difficulty in rendering fashionable a practice which had, before his arrival, already prevailed to an alarming extent. During the recess of the courts of judicature and of the assemblies, he visited the most distinguished landholders of the colonies, and the rage of playing deep, reckless of time, health or money, spread like a contagion among a class proverbial for their hospitality, their politeness and fondness for expense. In every thing besides, Fauquier was the ornament and the delight of Virginia.

Happy it was for young Jefferson, that "the example of so many virtues and accomplishments" in this brave gentleman failed to give any attraction, for him at least, to the vice which was such a blot on Fauquier's fine character. Jefferson never knew one card from another, and never allowed the game to be played in his own house.

Turning from the picture of the gifted but dissipated royal Governor, it is a relief to glance at the character given by Jefferson of the equally gifted but pure and virtuous George Wythe. We can not refrain from giving the conclusion of his sketch of Wythe, completing, as it does, the picture of the "partie quarrée" which so often met at the Governor's hospitable board:

No man ever left behind him a character more venerated than George Wythe. His virtue was of the purest tint; his integrity inflexible, and his justice exact; of warm patriotism, and, devoted as he was to liberty, and the natural and equal rights of man, he might truly be called the Cato of his country, without the avarice of the Roman; for a more disinterested man never lived. Temperance and regularity in all his habits gave him general good health, and his unaffected modesty and suavity of manners endeared him to every one. He was of easy elocution; his language chaste, methodical in the arrangement of his matter, learned and logical in the use of it, and of great urbanity in debate; not quick of apprehension, but, with a little time, profound in penetration and sound in conclusion. In his philosophy he was firm; and neither troubling, nor, perhaps, trusting, any one with his religious creed, he left the world to the conclusion that that religion must be good which could produce a life of such exemplary virtue. His stature was of the middle size, well formed and proportioned, and the features of his face were manly, comely, and engaging. Such was George Wythe, the honor of his own and the model of future times.

[CHAPTER II.]

Intense Application as a Student.—Habits of Study kept up during his Vacations.—First Preparations made for Building at Monticello.—Letters to his College Friend, John Page.—Anecdote of Benjamin Harrison.—Jefferson's Devotion to his eldest Sister.—He witnesses the Debate on the Stamp Act.—First Meeting with Patrick Henry.—His Opinion of him.—His superior Education.—Always a Student.—Wide Range of Information.—Anecdote.—Death of his eldest Sister.—His Grief.—Buries himself in his Books.—Finishes his Course of Law Studies.—Begins to practise.—Collection of Vocabularies of Indian Languages.—House at Shadwell burnt.—Loss of his Library.—Marriage.—Anecdote of his Courtship.—Wife's Beauty.—Bright Prospects.—Friendship for Dabney Carr.—His Talents.—His Death.—Jefferson buries him at Monticello.—His Epitaph.

Great as were the charms and delights of the society into which Jefferson was thrown in Williamsburg, they had not the power to draw him off from his studies. On the contrary, he seemed to find from his intercourse with such men as Wythe and Small, fresh incentives to diligence in his literary pursuits; and these, together with his natural taste for study, made his application to it so intense, that had he possessed a less vigorous and robust constitution, his health must have given way. He studied fifteen hours a day. During the most closely occupied days of his college life it was his habit to study until two o'clock at night, and rise at dawn; the day he spent in close application—the only recreation being a run at twilight to a certain stone which stood at a point a mile beyond the limits of the town. His habits of study were kept up during his vacations, which were spent at Shadwell; and though he did not cut himself off from the pleasures of social intercourse with his friends and family, yet he still devoted nearly three-fourths of his time to his books. He rose in the morning as soon as the hands of a clock placed on the mantle-piece in his chamber could be distinguished in the gray light of early dawn. After sunset he crossed the Rivanna in a little canoe, which was kept exclusively for his own use, and walked up to the summit of his loved Monticello, where he was having the apex of the mountain levelled down, preparatory to building.

The following extracts from letters written to his friends while he was a college-boy, give a fair picture of the sprightliness of his nature and his enjoyment of society.

To John Page—a friend to whom he was devotedly attached all through life—he writes, Dec. 25, 1762:

You can not conceive the satisfaction it would give me to have a letter from you. Write me very circumstantially every thing which happened at the wedding. Was she[4] there? because if she was, I ought to have been at the devil for not being there too. If there is any news stirring in town or country, such as deaths, courtships, or marriages, in the circle of my acquaintance, let me know it. Remember me affectionately to all the young ladies of my acquaintance, particularly the Miss Burwells, and Miss Potters; and tell them that though that heavy earthly part of me, my body, be absent, the better half of me, my soul, is ever with them, and that my best wishes shall ever attend them. Tell Miss Alice Corbin that I verily believe the rats knew I was to win a pair of garters from her, or they never would have been so cruel as to carry mine away. This very consideration makes me so sure of the bet, that I shall ask every body I see from that part of the world, what pretty gentleman is making his addresses to her. I would fain ask the favor of Miss Becca Burwell to give me another watch-paper of her own cutting, which I should esteem much more, though it were a plain round one, than the nicest in the world cut by other hands; however, I am afraid she would think this presumption, after my suffering the other to get spoiled.

A few weeks later, he writes to Page, from Shadwell:

To tell you the plain truth, I have not a syllable to write to you about. For I do not conceive that any thing can happen in my world which you would give a curse to know, or I either. All things here appear to me to trudge on in one and the same round: we rise in the morning that we may eat breakfast, dinner, and supper; and go to bed again that we may get up the next morning and do the same; so that you never saw two peas more alike than our yesterday and to-day. Under these circumstances, what would you have me say? Would you that I should write nothing but truth? I tell you, I know nothing that is true. Or would you rather that I should write you a pack of lies? Why, unless they are more ingenious than I am able to invent, they would furnish you with little amusement. What can I do, then? Nothing but ask you the news in your world. How have you done since I saw you? How did Nancy look at you when you danced with her at Southall's? Have you any glimmering of hope? How does R. B. do? Had I better stay here and do nothing, or go down and do less? or, in other words, had I better stay here while I am here, or go down that I may have the pleasure of sailing up the river again in a full-rigged flat? Inclination tells me to go, receive my sentence, and be no longer in suspense; but reason says, If you go, and your attempt proves unsuccessful, you will be ten times more wretched than ever.... I have some thoughts of going to Petersburg if the actors go there in May. If I do, I do not know but I may keep on to Williamsburg, as the birth-night will be near. I hear that Ben Harrison[5] has been to Wilton: let me know his success.

In his literary pursuits and plans for the future, Jefferson found a most congenial and sympathizing companion, as well as a loving friend, in his highly-gifted young sister, Jane Jefferson. Three years his senior, and a woman of extraordinary vigor of mind, we can well imagine with what pride and pleasure she must have watched the early development and growth of her young brother's genius and learning. When five years old, he had read all the books contained in his father's little library, and we have already found him sought out by the royal Governor, and chosen as one of his favorite companions, when but a college-boy. Like himself, his sister was devoted to music, and they spent many hours together cultivating their taste and talent for it. Both were particularly fond of sacred music, and she often gratified her young brother by singing for him hymns.

We have seen, from his letters to his friend Page, that, while a student in Williamsburg, Jefferson fell in love with Miss Rebecca Burwell—one of the beauties of her day. He was indulging fond dreams of success in winning the young lady's heart and hand, when his courtship was suddenly cut short by her, to him, unexpected marriage to another.

In the following year, 1765, there took place in the House of Burgesses the great debate on the Stamp Act, in which Patrick Henry electrified his hearers by his bold and sublime flights of oratory. In the lobby of the House was seen the tall, thin figure of Jefferson, bending eagerly forward to witness the stirring scene—his face paled from the effects of hard study, and his eyes flashing with the fire of latent genius, and all the enthusiasm of youthful and devoted patriotism. In allusion to this scene, he writes in his Memoir:

When the famous resolutions of 1765 against the Stamp Act were proposed, I was yet a student of law in Williamsburg. I attended the debate, however, at the door of the lobby of the House of Burgesses, and heard the splendid display of Mr. Henry's talents as a popular orator. They were indeed great; such as I have never heard from any other man. He appeared to me to speak as Homer wrote.

It was when on his way to Williamsburg to enter William and Mary College, that Jefferson first met Henry. They spent a fortnight together on that occasion, at the house of Mr. Dandridge, in Hanover, and there began the acquaintance and friendship between them which lasted through life. While not considering Henry a man of education or a well-read lawyer, Jefferson often spoke with enthusiasm to his friends and family of the wonders and beauties of his eloquence, and also of his great influence and signal services in bringing about unanimity among the parties which were found in the colony at the commencement of the troubles with the mother-country. He frequently expressed admiration for his intrepid spirit and inflexible courage. Two years before his death we find him speaking of Henry thus:

Wirt says he read Plutarch's Lives once a year. I don't believe he ever read two volumes of them. On his visits to court, he used always to put up with me. On one occasion of the breaking up in November, to meet again in the spring, as he was departing in the morning, he looked among my books, and observed, "Mr. Jefferson, I will take two volumes of Hume's Essays, and try to read them this winter." On his return, he brought them, saying he had not been able to get half way into one of them.

His great delight was to put on his hunting-shirt, collect a parcel of overseers and such-like people, and spend weeks together hunting in the "piny woods," camping at night and cracking jokes round a light-wood fire.

It was to him that we were indebted for the unanimity that prevailed among us. He would address the assemblages of the people at which he was present in such strains of native eloquence as Homer wrote in. I never heard any thing that deserved to be called by the same name with what flowed from him; and where he got that torrent of language from is inconceivable. I have frequently shut my eyes while he spoke, and, when he was done, asked myself what he had said, without being able to recollect a word of it. He was no logician. He was truly a great man, however—one of enlarged views.

Mr. Jefferson furnished anecdotes, facts, and documents for Wirt's Life of Henry, and Mr. Wirt submitted his manuscript to him for criticism and review, which he gave, and also suggested alterations that were made. We find, from his letters to Mr. Wirt, that when the latter flagged and hesitated as to the completion and publication of his work, it was Jefferson who urged him on. In writing of Henry's supposed inattention to ancient charters, we find him expressing himself thus: "He drew all natural rights from a purer source—the feelings of his own breast."[6]

In connection with this subject, we can not refrain from quoting from Wirt the following fine description of Henry in the great debate on the Stamp Act:

It was in the midst of this magnificent debate, while he (Henry) was descanting on the tyranny of the obnoxious act, that he exclaimed, in a voice of thunder, and with the look of a god, "Cæsar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell, and George the Third—" ("Treason!" cried the Speaker. "Treason! treason!" echoed from every part of the House. It was one of those trying moments which are so decisive of character. Henry faltered not an instant; but rising to a loftier altitude, and fixing on the Speaker an eye of the most determined fire, he finished his sentence with the firmest emphasis)—"may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it."[7]

When we think of the wonderful powers of this great man, whose heaven-born eloquence so stirred the hearts of men, how touching the meekness with which, at the close of an eventful and honorable career, he thus writes of himself: "Without any classical education, without patrimony, without what is called the influence of family connection, and without solicitation, I have attained the highest offices of my country. I have often contemplated it as a rare and extraordinary instance, and pathetically exclaimed, 'Not unto me, not unto me, O Lord, but unto thy name be the praise!'"[8]

Jefferson continued to prosecute his studies at William and Mary, and we have in the following incident a pleasing proof of his generosity:

While at college, he was one year quite extravagant in his dress, and in his outlay in horses. At the end of the year he sent his account to his guardian; and thinking that he had spent more of the income from his father's estate than was his share, he proposed that the amount of his expenses should be deducted from his portion of the property. His guardian, however, replied good-naturedly, "No, no; if you have sowed your wild oats in this manner, Tom, the estate can well afford to pay your expenses."

When Jefferson left college, he had laid the broad and solid foundations of that fine education which in learning placed him head and shoulders above his contemporaries. A fine mathematician, he was also a finished Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, and Italian scholar. He carried with him to Congress in the year 1775 a reputation for great literary acquirements. John Adams, in his diary for that year, thus speaks of him: "Duane says that Jefferson is the greatest rubber-off of dust that he has met with; that he has learned French, Italian, and Spanish, and wants to learn German."

His school and college education was considered by him as only the vestibule to that palace of learning which is reached by "no royal road." He once told a grandson that from the time when, as a boy, he had turned off wearied from play and first found pleasure in books, he had never sat down in idleness. And when we consider the vast fund of learning and wide range of information possessed by him, and which in his advanced years won for him the appellation of a "walking encyclopædia," we can well understand how this must have been the case. His thirst for knowledge was insatiable, and he seized eagerly all means of obtaining it. It was his habit, in his intercourse with all classes of men—the mechanic as well as the man of science—to turn the conversation upon that subject with which the man was best acquainted, whether it was the construction of a wheel or the anatomy of an extinct species of animals; and after having drawn from him all the information which he possessed, on returning home or retiring to his private apartments, it was all set down by him in writing—thus arranging it methodically and fixing it in his mind.

An anecdote which has been often told of him will give the reader an idea of the varied extent of his knowledge. On one occasion, while travelling, he stopped at a country inn. A stranger, who did not know who he was, entered into conversation with this plainly-dressed and unassuming traveller. He introduced one subject after another into the conversation, and found him perfectly acquainted with each. Filled with wonder, he seized the first opportunity to inquire of the landlord who his guest was, saying that, when he spoke of the law, he thought he was a lawyer; then turning the conversation on medicine, felt sure he was a physician; but having touched on theology, he became convinced that he was a clergyman. "Oh," replied the landlord, "why I thought you knew the Squire." The stranger was then astonished to hear that the traveller whom he had found so affable and simple in his manners was Jefferson.

The family circle at Shadwell consisted of six sisters, two brothers, and their mother. Of the sisters, two married early, and left the home of their youth—Mary as the wife of Thomas Bolling, and Martha as that of the generous and highly-gifted young Dabney Carr, the brilliant promise of whose youth was so soon to be cut short by his untimely death.

In the fall of the year 1765, the whole family was thrown into mourning, and the deepest distress, by the death of Jane Jefferson—so long the pride and ornament of her house. She died in the twenty-eighth year of her age. The eldest of her family, and a woman who, from the noble qualities of her head and heart, had ever commanded their love and admiration, her death was a great blow to them all, but was felt by none so keenly as by Jefferson himself. The loss of such a sister to such a brother was irreparable; his grief for her was deep and constant; and there are, perhaps, few incidents in the domestic details of history more beautiful than his devotion to her during her life, and the tenderness of the love with which he cherished her memory to the last days of his long and eventful career. He frequently spoke of her to his grandchildren, and even in his extreme old age said that often in church some sacred air which her sweet voice had made familiar to him in youth recalled to him sweet visions of this sister whom he had loved so well and buried so young.

Among his manuscripts we find the following touching epitaph which he wrote for her:

"Ah, Joanna, puellarum optima,

Ah, ævi virentis flore prærepta,

Sit tibi terra lævis;

Longe, longeque valeto!"

After the death of his sister Jane, Jefferson had no congenial intellectual companion left in the family at Shadwell; his other sisters being all much younger than himself, except one, who was rather deficient in intellect. It is curious to remark the unequal distribution of talent in this family—each gifted member seeming to have been made so at the expense of one of the others.

In the severe affliction caused by the death of his sister, Jefferson sought consolation in renewed devotion to his books. After a five years' course of law studies, he was, as we have seen from his Memoir, introduced to its practice, at the bar of the General Court of Virginia, in the year 1767, by his "beloved friend and mentor," George Wythe. Of the extent of his practice during the eight years that it lasted, we have ample proof in his account-books. These show that during that time, in the General Court alone, he was engaged in nine hundred and forty-eight cases, and that he was employed as counsel by the first men in the colonies, and even in the mother-country.

An idea of the impression made by him as an advocate in the court-room is given in the following anecdote, which we have from his eldest grandson, Mr. Jefferson Randolph. Anxious to learn how his grandfather had stood as a pleader, Mr. Randolph once asked an old man of good sense who in his youth had often heard Jefferson deliver arguments in court, how he ranked as a speaker, "Well," said the old gentleman, in reply, "it is hard to tell, because he always took the right side." Few speakers, we imagine, would desire a greater compliment than that which the old man unconsciously paid in his reply.

The works which Jefferson has left behind him as his share in the revision of the laws of the State, place his erudition as a lawyer beyond question, while to no man does Virginia owe more for the preservation of her ancient records than to him. In this last work he was indefatigable. The manuscripts and materials for the early history of the State had been partially destroyed and scattered by the burning of State buildings and the ravages of war. These Jefferson, as far as it was possible, collected and restored, and it is to him that we owe their preservation at the present day.

While in the different public offices which he held during his life, Jefferson availed himself of every opportunity to get information concerning the language of the Indians of North America, and to this end he made a collection of the vocabularies of all the Indian languages, intending, in the leisure of his retirement from public life, to analyze them, and see if he could trace in them any likeness to other languages. When he left Washington, after vacating the presidential chair, these valuable papers were packed in a trunk and sent, with the rest of his baggage, around by Richmond, whence they were to be sent up the James and Rivanna Rivers to Monticello. Two negro boatmen who had charge of them, and who, in the simplicity of their ignorance, took it for granted that the ex-President was returning from office with untold wealth, being deceived by the weight of the trunk, broke into it, thinking that it contained gold. On discovering their mistake, the papers were scattered to the wind; and thus were lost literary treasures which might have been a rich feast to many a philologist.

Marriage Licene-Bond (Fac-simile)

In the year 1770 the house at Shadwell was destroyed by fire, and Jefferson then moved to Monticello, where his preparations for a residence were sufficiently advanced to enable him to make it his permanent abode. He was from home when the fire took place at Shadwell, and the first inquiry he made of the negro who carried him the news was after his books. "Oh, my young master," he replied, carelessly, "they were all burnt; but, ah! we saved your fiddle."

In 1772 Jefferson married Martha Skelton, the widow of Bathurst Skelton, and the daughter of John Wayles, of whom he speaks thus in his Memoir

Mr. Wayles was a lawyer of much practice, to which he was introduced more by his industry, punctuality, and practical readiness, than by eminence in the science of his profession. He was a most agreeable companion, full of pleasantry and humor, and welcomed in every society. He acquired a handsome fortune, and died in May, 1773, leaving three daughters. The portion which came on that event to Mrs. Jefferson, after the debts were paid, which were very considerable, was about equal to my own patrimony, and consequently doubled the ease of our circumstances.

The marriage took place at "The Forest," in Charles City County. The bride having been left a widow when very young, was only twenty-three when she married a second time.[9] She is described as having been very beautiful. A little above middle height, with a lithe and exquisitely formed figure, she was a model of graceful and queenlike carriage. Nature, so lavish with her charms for her, to great personal attractions, added a mind of no ordinary calibre. She was well educated for her day, and a constant reader; she inherited from her father his method and industry, as the accounts, kept in her clear handwriting, and still in the hands of her descendants, testify. Her well-cultivated talent for music served to enhance her charms not a little in the eyes of such a musical devotee as Jefferson.

So young and so beautiful, she was already surrounded by suitors when Jefferson entered the lists and bore off the prize. A pleasant anecdote about two of his rivals has been preserved in the tradition of his family. While laboring under the impression that the lady's mind was still undecided as to which of her suitors should be the accepted lover, they met accidentally in the hall of her father's house. They were on the eve of entering the drawing-room, when the sound of music caught their ear; the accompanying voices of Jefferson and his lady-love were soon recognized, and the two disconcerted lovers, after exchanging a glance, picked up their hats and left.

The New-year and wedding festivities being over, the happy bridal couple left for Monticello. Their adventures on this journey of more than a hundred miles, made in the dead of the winter, and their arrival at Monticello, were, years afterwards, related as follows, by their eldest daughter, Mrs. Randolph,[10] who heard the tale from her father's lips:

They left The Forest after a fall of snow, light then, but increasing in depth as they advanced up the country. They were finally obliged to quit the carriage and proceed on horseback. Having stopped for a short time at Blenheim, where an overseer only resided, they left it at sunset to pursue their way through a mountain track rather than a road, in which the snow lay from eighteen inches to two feet deep, having eight miles to go before reaching Monticello. They arrived late at night, the fires all out and the servants retired to their own houses for the night. The horrible dreariness of such a house at the end of such a journey I have often heard both relate.

Too happy in each other's love, however, to be long troubled by the "dreariness" of a cold and dark house, and having found a bottle of wine "on a shelf behind some books," the young couple refreshed themselves with its contents, and startled the silence of the night with song and merry laughter.

Possessing a fine estate and being blessed with a beautiful and accomplished wife, Jefferson seemed fairly launched upon the great ocean of life with every prospect of a prosperous and happy voyage. We find from his account-books that his income was a handsome one for that day, being three thousand dollars from his practice and two thousand from his farms. This, as we have seen, was increased by the receipt of his wife's fortune at her father's death.

Of the many friends by whom he was surrounded in his college days Dabney Carr was his favorite; his friendship for him was strengthened by the ties of family connection, on his becoming his brother-in-law as the husband of his sister Martha. As boys, they had loved each other; and when studying together it was their habit to go with their books to the well-wooded sides of Monticello, and there pursue their studies beneath the shade of a favorite oak. So much attached did the two friends become to this tree, that it became the subject of a mutual promise, that the one who survived should see that the body of the other was buried at its foot. When young Carr's untimely death occurred Jefferson was away from home, and on his return he found that he had been buried at Shadwell. Being mindful of his promise, he had the body disinterred, and removing it, placed it beneath that tree whose branches now bend over such illustrious dead—for this was the origin of the grave-yard at Monticello.

It is not only as Jefferson's friend that Dabney Carr lives in history. The brilliancy of the reputation which he won in his short career, has placed his name among the men who stood first for talent and patriotism in the early days of the Revolution. Jefferson himself, in describing his first appearance in the Virginia House of Burgesses, pays a warm and handsome tribute to his friend. He says:

I well remember the pleasure expressed in the countenance and conversation of the members generally on this débût of Mr. Carr, and the hopes they conceived as well from the talents as the patriotism it manifested.... His character was of a high order. A spotless integrity, sound judgment, handsome imagination, enriched by education and reading, quick and clear in his conceptions, of correct and ready elocution, impressing every hearer with the sincerity of the heart from which it flowed. His firmness was inflexible in whatever he thought was right; but when no moral principle stood in the way, never had man more of the milk of human kindness, of indulgence, of softness, of pleasantry of conversation and conduct. The number of his friends and the warmth of their affection, were proofs of his worth, and of their estimate of it.

We have again from Jefferson's pen a charming picture of the domestic character of Carr, in a letter to his friend John Page, written in 1770:

He (Carr) speaks, thinks, and dreams of nothing but his young son. This friend of ours, Page, in a very small house, with a table, half a dozen chairs, and one or two servants, is the happiest man in the universe. Every incident in life he so takes as to render it a source of pleasure. With as much benevolence as the heart of man will hold, but with an utter neglect of the costly apparatus of life, he exhibits to the world a new phenomenon in life—the Samian sage in the tub of the cynic.

The death of this highly-gifted young Virginian, whose early life was so full of promise, took place on the 16th of May, 1773, in the thirtieth year of his age. His wife, a woman of vigorous understanding and earnest warmth of heart, was passionately devoted to him, and his death fell like a blight on her young life. She found in her brother a loving protector for herself and a fatherly affection and guidance for her six children—three sons and three daughters—who were received into his family as his adopted children. Among Jefferson's papers there was found, after his death, the following, written on a sheet of note-paper:

INSCRIPTION ON MY FRIEND D. CARR'S TOMB.

Lamented shade, whom every gift of heaven

Profusely blest; a temper winning mild;

Nor pity softer, nor was truth more bright.

Constant in doing well, he neither sought

Nor shunned applause. No bashful merit sighed

Near him neglected: sympathizing he

Wiped off the tear from Sorrow's clouded eye

With kindly hand, and taught her heart to smile.

Mallet's Excursion.

Send for a plate of copper to be nailed on the tree at the foot of his grave, with this inscription:

Still shall thy grave with rising flowers be dressed

And the green turf lie lightly on thy breast;

There shall the morn her earliest tears bestow,

There the first roses of the year shall blow,

While angels with their silver wings o'ershade

The ground now sacred by thy reliques made.

On the upper part of the stone inscribe as follows:

Here lie the remains of
Dabney Carr,
Son of John and Jane Carr, of Louisa County,
Who was born ——, 1744.
Intermarried with Martha Jefferson, daughter of Peter
and Jane Jefferson, 1765;
And died at Charlottesville, May 16, 1773,
Leaving six small children.
To his Virtue, Good Sense, Learning, and Friendship
this stone is dedicated by Thomas Jefferson, who, of all men living,
loved him most.

[CHAPTER III.]

Happy Life at Monticello.—Jefferson's fine Horsemanship.—Birth of his oldest Child.—Goes to Congress.—Death of his Mother.—Kindness to British Prisoners.—Their Gratitude.—His Devotion to Music.—Letter to General De Riedesel.—Is made Governor of Virginia.—Tarleton pursues Lafayette.—Reaches Charlottesville.—The British at Monticello.—Cornwallis's Destruction of Property at Elk Hill.—Jefferson retires at the End of his Second Term as Governor.—Mrs. Jefferson's delicate Health.—Jefferson meets with an Accident.—Writes his Notes on Virginia.—The Marquis De Chastellux visits Monticello.—His Description of it.—Letter of Congratulation from Jefferson to Washington.—Mrs. Jefferson's Illness and Death.—Her Daughter's Description of the Scene.—Jefferson's Grief.

Following the course which I have laid down for myself, I shall give but a passing notice of the political events of Jefferson's life, and only dwell on such incidents as may throw out in bold relief the beauties and charms of his domestic character. Except when called from home by duties imposed upon him by his country, the even tenor of his happy life at Monticello remained unbroken. He prosecuted his studies with that same ardent thirst for knowledge which he had evinced when a young student in Williamsburg, mastering every subject that he took up.

Much time and expense were devoted by him to ornamenting and improving his house and grounds. A great lover of nature, he found his favorite recreations in out-of-door enjoyments, and it was his habit to the day of his death, no matter what his occupation, nor what office he held, to spend the hours between one and three in the afternoon on horseback. Noted for his bold and graceful horsemanship, he kept as riding-horses only those of the best blood of the old Virginia stock. In the days of his youth he was very exacting of his groom in having his horses always beautifully kept; and it is said that it was his habit, when his riding-horse was brought up for him to mount, to brush his white cambric handkerchief across the animal's shoulders and send it back to the stable if any dust was left on the handkerchief.

The garden-book lying before me shows the interest which he took in all gardening and farming operations. This book, in which he began to make entries as early as the year 1766, and which he continued to keep all through life, except when from home, has every thing jotted down in it, from the date of the earliest peach-blossom to the day when his wheat was ready for the sickle. His personal, household, and farm accounts were kept with the precision of the most rigid accountant, and he was a rare instance of a man of enlarged views and wide range of thought, being fond of details. The price of his horses, the fee paid to a ferryman, his little gifts to servants, his charities—whether great or small—from the penny dropped into the church-box to the handsome donation given for the erection of a church—all found a place in his account-book.

In 1772 his eldest child, Martha, was born; his second daughter, Jane Randolph, died in the fall of 1775, when eighteen months old. He was most unfortunate in his children—out of six that he had, only two, Martha and Mary, surviving the period of infancy.

In the year 1775 Jefferson went to Philadelphia as a member of the first Congress.[11] In the year 1776 he made the following entry in his little pocket account-book: "March 31. My mother died about eight o'clock this morning, in the 57th year of her age." Thus she did not live to see the great day with whose glory her son's name is indissolubly connected.[12]

The British prisoners who were surrendered by Burgoyne at the battle of Saratoga were sent to Virginia and quartered in Albemarle, a few miles from Monticello. They had not, however, been settled there many months, before the Governor (Patrick Henry) was urged to have them moved to some other part of the country, on the plea that the provisions consumed by them were more necessary for our own forces. The Governor and Council were on the eve of issuing the order for their removal, when an earnest entreaty addressed to them by Jefferson put a stop to all proceedings on the subject. In this address and petition he says, in speaking of the prisoners,

Their health is also of importance. I would not endeavor to show that their lives are valuable to us, because it would suppose a possibility that humanity was kicked out of doors in America, and interest only attended to.... But is an enemy so execrable, that, though in captivity, his wishes and comforts are to be disregarded and even crossed? I think not. It is for the benefit of mankind to mitigate the horrors of war as much as possible. The practice, therefore, of modern nations, of treating captive enemies with politeness and generosity, is not only delightful in contemplation, but really interesting to all the world—friends, foes, and neutrals.

This successful effort in their behalf called forth the most earnest expressions of gratitude from the British and German officers among the prisoners. The Baron De Riedesel, their commander, was comfortably fixed in a house not far from Monticello, and he and the baroness received every attention from Jefferson. Indeed, these attentions were extended to young officers of the lowest rank. The hospitalities of her house were gracefully and cordially tendered to these unfortunate strangers by Mrs. Jefferson, and her husband threw open to them his library, whence they got books to while away the tedium of their captivity. The baroness, a warm-hearted, intelligent woman, from her immense stature, and her habit of riding on horseback en cavalier, was long remembered as a kind of wonder by the good and simple-hearted people of Albermarle. The intercourse between her household and that at Monticello was that of neighbors.

Part of Draft of Declaration of Independence (Fac-simile)

When Phillips, a British officer whom Jefferson characterized as "the proudest man of the proudest nation on earth," wrote his thanks to him for his generous kindness, we find Jefferson replying as follows:

The great cause which divides our countries is not to be decided by individual animosities. The harmony of private societies can not weaken national efforts. To contribute by neighborly intercourse and attention to make others happy, is the shortest and surest way of being happy ourselves. As these sentiments seem to have directed your conduct, we should be as unwise as illiberal, were we not to preserve the same temper of mind.

He also had some pleasant intercourse and correspondence with young De Ungar, an accomplished officer, who seems to have had many literary and scientific tastes congenial with Jefferson's. He thus winds up a letter to this young officer:

When the course of human events shall have removed you to distant scenes of action, where laurels not moistened with the blood of my country may be gathered, I shall urge my sincere prayers for your obtaining every honor and preferment which may gladden the heart of a soldier. On the other hand, should your fondness for philosophy resume its merited ascendency, is it impossible to hope that this unexplored country may tempt your residence, by holding out materials wherewith to build a fame, founded on the happiness and not the calamities of human nature? Be this as it may—a philosopher or a soldier—I wish you personally many felicities.

The following extract from a letter, written in 1778 to a friend in Europe, shows Jefferson's extreme fondness of music:

If there is a gratification which I envy any people in this world, it is, to your country, its music. This is the favorite passion of my soul, and fortune has cast my lot in a country where it is in a state of deplorable barbarism. From the line of life in which we conjecture you to be, I have for some time lost the hope of seeing you here. Should the event prove so, I shall ask your assistance in procuring a substitute, who may be a proficient in singing, etc., on the harpsichord. I should be contented to receive such an one two or three years hence, when it is hoped he may come more safely, and find here a greater plenty of those useful things which commerce alone can furnish. The bounds of an American fortune will not admit the indulgence of a domestic band of musicians, yet I have thought that a passion for music might be reconciled with that economy which we are obliged to observe.

From his correspondence for the year 1780 I take the following pleasantly written letter to General De Riedesel. I have elsewhere alluded to the pleasant intercourse between his family and Jefferson's, when he was a prisoner on parole in the neighborhood of Monticello.

To General De Riedesel.

Richmond, May 3d, 1780.

Sir—Your several favors of December 4th, February 10th, and March 30th, are come duly to hand. I sincerely condole with Madame De Riedesel on the birth of a daughter,[13] but receive great pleasure from the information of her recovery, as every circumstance of felicity to her, yourself or family, is interesting to us. The little attentions you are pleased to magnify so much, never deserved a mention or thought. My mortification was, that the peculiar situation in which we were, put it out of our power to render your stay here more comfortable. I am sorry to learn that the negotiations for the exchange of prisoners have proved abortive, as well from a desire to see the necessary distresses of war alleviated in every possible instance, as I am sensible how far yourself and family are interested in it. Against this, however, is to be weighed the possibility that we may again have a pleasure we should otherwise, perhaps, never have had—that of seeing you again. Be this as it may, opposed as we happen to be in our sentiments of duty and honor, and anxious for contrary events, I shall, nevertheless, sincerely rejoice in every circumstance of happiness or safety which may attend you personally; and when a termination of the present contest shall put it into my power to declare to you more unreservedly how sincere are the sentiments of esteem and respect (wherein Mrs. Jefferson joins me) which I entertain for Madame De Riedesel and yourself, and with which I am, sir, your most obedient and most humble servant,

TH. JEFFERSON.

Jefferson was made Governor of Virginia in 1779; and when Tarleton, in 1781, reached Charlottesville, after his famous pursuit of "the boy" Lafayette, who slipped through his fingers, it was expected that Monticello, as the residence of the Governor, would be pillaged. The conduct of the British was far different.

Jefferson, on being informed that the enemy were close at hand, put Mrs. Jefferson and her children in a carriage and sent them to a neighbor's, where they would be out of harm's way. Having sent his horse to the blacksmith's to be shod, he ordered him to be taken to a certain point of the road between Monticello and Carter's Mountain, while he remained quietly at home collecting his most valuable papers. Two hours after the departure of his family, a gentleman rode up and told him that the British were on the mountain. He then left the house and walked over to Carter's Mountain, whence he had a full view of Charlottesville. He viewed the town through a small telescope which he took with him, and seeing no "red-coats," thought their coming was a false alarm, and turned with the intention of going back to the house. He had not gone far, however, when he found his light sword-cane had dropped from its sheath. He retraced his steps, found the weapon, and, on turning around again, saw that Charlottesville was "alive with British." He then mounted his horse and followed his family.

Captain McLeod commanded the party of British soldiers who were sent to Monticello to seize the Governor, and he went with "strict orders from Tarleton to allow nothing in the house to be injured." When he found that the bird had flown, he called for a servant of the house, asked which were Mr. Jefferson's private apartments, and, being shown the door which led to them, he turned the key in the lock and ordered that every thing in the house should be untouched.

Unprepared for this generous conduct on the part of the British, two faithful slaves, Martin and Cæsar, were busy concealing their master's plate under a floor, a few feet from the ground, when the red-coats made their appearance on the lawn at Monticello. A plank had been removed, and Cæsar, having slipped down through the cavity, stood below to receive the plate as it was handed down by Martin. The last piece had been handed down when the soldiers came in sight. There was not a moment to lose, and Martin, thinking only of his master's plate and not of Cæsar's comfort, clapped the plank down on top of the poor fellow, and there he remained in the dark and without food for three days and three nights. Martin himself on this occasion gave a much more striking proof of fidelity. A brutal soldier placed a pistol to his breast and threatened to fire unless he disclosed his master's retreat. "Fire away then!" was the slave's ready and defiant reply.

The handsome conduct of the British at Monticello afforded a striking contrast to that of their forces under the command of Cornwallis, who visited Elk Hill—Jefferson's James River estate. The commanding general, Cornwallis, had his head-quarters for ten days at the house on the estate. This house, though not often occupied by Jefferson and his family, was furnished, and contained a library. The following is the owner's account of the manner in which the estate was laid waste:

I had time to remove most of the effects out of the house, He destroyed all my growing crops of corn and tobacco; he burned all my barns containing the same articles of the last year, having first taken what corn he wanted; he used, as was to be expected, all my stock of cattle, sheep, and hogs, for the sustenance of his army, and carried off all the horses capable of service; of those too young for service he cut the throats; and he burned all the fences on the plantation, so as to render it an absolute waste. He carried off, also, about thirty slaves. Had this been to give them freedom he would have done right, but it was to consign them to inevitable death from the small-pox and putrid fever then raging in his camp. This I knew afterwards to be the fate of twenty-seven of them. I never had news of the remaining three, but suppose they shared the same fate. When I say that Lord Cornwallis did all this, I do not mean that he carried about the torch in his own hands, but that it was all done under his eye—the situation of the house in which he was commanding a view of every part of the plantation, so that he must have seen every fire.[14]

Again he writes:

History will never relate the horrors committed by the British army in the Southern States of America. They raged in Virginia six months only, from the middle of April to the middle of October, 1781, when they were all taken prisoners; and I give you a faithful specimen of their transactions for ten days of that time, and on one spot only.[15]

At the end of the second year of his term Jefferson resigned his commission as Governor. The state of Mrs. Jefferson's health was at this time a source of great anxiety to him, and he promised her, when he left public life on this occasion, that he would never again leave her to accept any office or take part in political life. Saddened by the deaths of her children, and with a constitution weakened by disease, her condition was truly alarming, and wrung the heart of her devoted husband as he watched her failing day by day. He himself met with an accident about this time—a fall from his horse—which, though not attended with serious consequences, kept him, for two or three weeks, more closely confined in the house than it was his habit to be.

It was during this confinement that he wrote the principal part of his "Notes on Virginia." He had been in the habit of committing to writing any information about the State which he thought would be of use to him in any station, public or private; and receiving a letter from M. De Marbois, the French ambassador, asking for certain statistical accounts of the State of Virginia, he embodied the substance of the information he had so acquired and sent it to him in the form of the "Notes on Virginia."

A charming picture of Monticello and its inmates at that day is found in "Travels in North America, by the Marquis De Chastellux." This accomplished French nobleman visited Jefferson in the spring of 1782. After describing his approach to the foot of the southwest range of mountains, he says:

On the summit of one of them we discovered the house of Mr. Jefferson, which stands pre-eminent in these retirements; it was himself who built it, and preferred this situation; for although he possessed considerable property in the neighborhood, there was nothing to prevent him from fixing his residence wherever he thought proper. But it was a debt Nature owed to a philosopher, and a man of taste, that in his own possessions he should find a spot where he might best study and enjoy her. He calls his house Monticello (in Italian, Little Mountain), a very modest title, for it is situated upon a very lofty one, but which announces the owner's attachment to the language of Italy; and, above all, to the fine arts, of which that country was the cradle, and is still the asylum. As I had no further occasion for a guide, I separated from the Irishman; and after ascending by a tolerably commodious road for more than half an hour we arrived at Monticello. This house, of which Mr. Jefferson was the architect, and often one of the workmen, is rather elegant, and in the Italian taste, though not without fault; it consists of one large square pavilion, the entrance of which is by two porticoes, ornamented with pillars. The ground-floor consists of a very large lofty saloon, which is to be decorated entirely in the antique style; above it is a library of the same form; two small wings, with only a ground-floor and attic story, are joined to this pavilion, and communicate with the kitchen, offices, etc., which will form a kind of basement story, over which runs a terrace.

My object in this short description is only to show the difference between this and the other houses of the country; for we may safely aver that Mr. Jefferson is the first American who has consulted the fine arts to know how he should shelter himself from the weather.

But it is on himself alone I ought to bestow my time. Let me describe to you a man, not yet forty, tall and with a mild and pleasing countenance, but whose mind and understanding are ample substitutes for every exterior grace. An American, who, without ever having quitted his own country, is at once a musician, skilled in drawing, a geometrician, an astronomer, a natural philosopher, legislator, and statesman. A Senator of America, who sat for two years in that body which brought about the Revolution; and which is never mentioned without respect, though unhappily not without regret, a Governor of Virginia, who filled this difficult station during the invasions of Arnold, of Phillips, and of Cornwallis; a philosopher, in voluntary retirement from the world and public business because he loves the world, in as much only as he can flatter himself with being useful to mankind, and the minds of his countrymen are not yet in a condition either to bear the light or suffer contradiction. A mild and amiable wife, charming children, of whose education he himself takes charge, a house to embellish, great provisions to improve, and the arts and sciences to cultivate; these are what remain to Mr. Jefferson, after having played a principal character on the theatre of the New World, and which he preferred to the honorable commission of Minister Plenipotentiary in Europe.

The visit which I made him was not unexpected, for he had long since invited me to come and pass a few days with him in the centre of the mountains; notwithstanding which, I found his appearance serious—nay even cold, but before I had been two hours with him, we were as intimate as if we had passed our whole lives together; walking, books, but above all, a conversation always varied and interesting, always supported by the sweet satisfaction experienced by two persons, who, in communicating their sentiments and opinions, are invariably in unison, and who understand each other at the first hint, made four days pass away like so many minutes.

This conformity of opinions and sentiments on which I insist because it constitutes my own eulogium (and self-love must somewhere show itself), this conformity, I say, was so perfect, that not only our taste was similar, but our predilections also; those partialities which cold methodical minds ridicule as enthusiastic, while sensible and animated ones cherish and adopt the glorious appellation. I recollect with pleasure that as we were conversing over a bowl of punch, after Mrs. Jefferson had retired, our conversation turned on the poems of Ossian. It was a spark of electricity which passed rapidly from one to the other; we recollected the passages in those sublime poems which particularly struck us, and entertained my fellow-travellers, who fortunately knew English well, and were qualified to judge of their merits, though they had never read the poems. In our enthusiasm the book was sent for, and placed near the bowl, where, by their mutual aid, the night far advanced imperceptibly upon us.

Sometimes natural philosophy, at others politics or the arts, were the topics of our conversation, for no object had escaped Mr. Jefferson; and it seemed as if from his youth he had placed his mind, as he has done his house, on an elevated situation, from which he might contemplate the universe.[16]

Mr. Jefferson—continues the Marquis—amused himself by raising a score of these animals (deer) in his park; they are become very familiar, which happens to all the animals of America; for they are in general much easier to tame than those of Europe. He amuses himself by feeding them with Indian corn, of which they are very fond, and which they eat out of his hand. I followed him one evening into a deep valley, where they are accustomed to assemble towards the close of the day, and saw them walk, run, and bound; but the more I examined their paces, the less I was inclined to annex them to any particular species in Europe. Mr. Jefferson being no sportsman, and not having crossed the seas, could have no decided opinion on this part of natural history; but he has not neglected the other branches.

I saw with pleasure that he had applied himself particularly to meteorological observation, which, in fact, of all the branches of philosophy, is the most proper for Americans to cultivate, from the extent of their country and the variety of their situation, which gives them in this point a great advantage over us, who, in other respects, have so many over them. Mr. Jefferson has made with Mr. Madison, a well-informed professor of mathematics, some correspondent observations on the reigning winds at Williamsburg and Monticello.[17]

But—says the Marquis—I perceive my journal is something like the conversation I had with Mr. Jefferson; I pass from one object to another, and forget myself as I write, as it happened not unfrequently in his society. I must now quit the friend of nature, but not Nature herself, who expects me, in all her splendor, at the end of my journey; I mean the famous Bridge of Rocks, which unites two mountains, the most curious object I ever beheld, as its construction is the most difficult of solution. Mr. Jefferson would most willingly have conducted me thither, although this wonder is upward of eighty miles from him, and he had often seen it, but his wife being expected every moment to lie in, and himself being as good a husband as he is an excellent philosopher and virtuous citizen, he only acted as my guide for about sixteen miles, to the passage of the little river Mechum, when we parted, and, I presume to flatter myself, with mutual regret."[18]

The following warm letter of congratulation to General Washington shows the affection felt for him by Jefferson:

To General Washington.

Monticello, October 28th, 1781.

Sir—I hope it will not be unacceptable to your Excellency to receive the congratulations of a private individual on your return to your native country, and, above all things, on the important success which has attended it.[19] Great as this has been, however, it can scarcely add to the affection with which we have looked up to you. And if, in the minds of any, the motives of gratitude to our good allies were not sufficiently apparent, the part they have borne in this action must amply convince them. Notwithstanding the state of perpetual solicitude to which I am unfortunately reduced,[20] I should certainly have done myself the honor of paying my respects to you personally; but I apprehend that these visits, which are meant by us as marks of our attachment to you, must interfere with the regulations of a camp, and be particularly inconvenient to one whose time is too precious to be wasted in ceremony.

I beg you to believe me among the sincerest of those who subscribe themselves your Excellency's most obedient and most humble servant,

TH. JEFFERSON.

The delicate condition of Mrs. Jefferson's health, alluded to in the preceding letter, continued to be such as to excite the alarm of her friends, and their worst apprehensions were soon realized. After the birth of her sixth child she sank so rapidly that it was plain there was no hope of her recovery. During her illness Jefferson was untiring in his attentions to her, and the devotion he showed her was constant and touching. The following account of the closing scenes of this domestic tragedy I take from Mrs. Randolph's manuscript:

During my mother's life he (Jefferson) bestowed much time and attention on our education—our cousins, the Carrs, and myself—and after her death, during the first month of desolation which followed, I was his constant companion while we remained at Monticello....

As a nurse no female ever had more tenderness nor anxiety. He nursed my poor mother in turn with aunt Carr and her own sister—sitting up with her and administering her medicines and drink to the last. For four months that she lingered he was never out of calling; when not at her bedside, he was writing in a small room which opened immediately at the head of her bed. A moment before the closing scene, he was led from the room in a state of insensibility by his sister, Mrs. Carr, who, with great difficulty, got him into the library, where he fainted, and remained so long insensible that they feared he never would revive. The scene that followed I did not witness, but the violence of his emotion, when, almost by stealth, I entered his room by night, to this day I dare not describe to myself. He kept his room three weeks, and I was never a moment from his side. He walked almost incessantly night and day, only lying down occasionally, when nature was completely exhausted, on a pallet that had been brought in during his long fainting-fit. My aunts remained constantly with him for some weeks—I do not remember how many. When at last he left his room, he rode out, and from that time he was incessantly on horseback, rambling about the mountain, in the least frequented roads, and just as often through the woods. In those melancholy rambles I was his constant companion—a solitary witness to many a burst of grief, the remembrance of which has consecrated particular scenes of that lost home[21] beyond the power of time to obliterate.

Mrs. Jefferson left three children, Martha, Mary, and Lucy Elizabeth—the last an infant. As far as it was possible, their father, by his watchful care and tender love, supplied the place of the mother they had lost. The account of her death just given gives a vivid description of his grief, and so alarming was the state of insensibility into which he fell, that his sister, Mrs. Carr, called to his sister-in-law, who was still bending over her sister's lifeless body, "to leave the dead and come and take care of the living."

Years afterwards he wrote the following epitaph for his wife's tomb:

To the Memory of

MARTHA JEFFERSON,

Daughter of John Wayles;
Born October 19th, 1748, O. S.;
Intermarried with

THOMAS JEFFERSON

January 1st, 1772;
Torn from him by Death
September 6th, 1782:
This Monument of his Love is inscribed.

If in the melancholy shades below,

The flames of friends and lovers cease to glow,

Yet mine shall sacred last; mine undecayed

Burn on through death and animate my shade.[22]

MARTHA JEFFERSON RANDOLPH.
From Portrait by Sully.

[CHAPTER IV.]

Visit to Chesterfield County.—Is appointed Plenipotentiary to Europe.—Letter to the Marquis de Chastellux.—Goes North with his Daughter.—Leaves her in Philadelphia, and goes to Congress.—Letters to his Daughter.—Sails for Europe.—His Daughter's Description of the Voyage.—His Establishment and Life in Paris.—Succeeds Franklin as Minister there.—Anecdotes of Franklin.—Extracts from Mrs. Adams's Letters.—Note from Jefferson to Mrs. Smith.

A short time after Mrs. Jefferson's death, Jefferson went with his children to Ampthill, in Chesterfield County, the residence of Colonel Archibald Cary. This gentleman had kindly offered his house to him, that he might there have his children inoculated for the small-pox. While engaged as their chief nurse on this occasion, he received notice of his appointment by Congress as Plenipotentiary to Europe, to be associated with Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams in negotiating peace. Twice before the same appointment had been declined by him, as he had promised his wife never again to enter public life while she lived. Mr. Madison, in alluding to his appointment by Congress, says:

The reappointment of Mr. Jefferson as Minister Plenipotentiary for negotiating peace, was agreed to unanimously, and without a single adverse remark. The act took place in consequence of its being suggested that the death of Mrs. Jefferson had probably changed the sentiments of Mr. Jefferson with regard to public life.[23]

Jefferson himself, in speaking of this appointment, says in his Memoir:

I had, two months before that, lost the cherished companion of my life, in whose affections, unabated on both sides, I had lived the last ten years in unchequered happiness. With the public interests the state of my mind concurred in recommending the change of scene proposed; and I accepted the appointment.

Writing to the Marquis de Chastellux, he says:

Ampthill, November 26th, 1782.

Dear Sir—I received your friendly letters of —— and June 30th, but the latter not till the 17th of October. It found me a little emerging from the stupor of mind which had rendered me as dead to the world as was she whose loss occasioned it.... Before that event my scheme of life had been determined. I had folded myself in the arms of retirement, and rested all prospects of future happiness on domestic and literary objects. A single event wiped away all my plans, and left me a blank which I had not the spirits to fill up. In this state of mind an appointment from Congress found me, requiring me to cross the Atlantic.

Having accepted the appointment, Mr. Jefferson left his two youngest children with their maternal aunt, Mrs. Eppes, of Eppington, and went North with his daughter Martha, then in her eleventh year. Some delay in his departure for Europe was occasioned by news received from Europe by Congress. During the uncertainty as to the time of his departure he placed the little Martha at school in Philadelphia, under the charge of an excellent and kind lady, Mrs. Hopkinson. From this time we find him writing regularly to his daughters during every separation from them, and it is in the letters written on those occasions that are portrayed most vividly the love and tenderness of the father, and the fine traits of character of the man. That the reader may see what these were, I shall give a number of these letters, and, as far as possible, in their chronological order.

The original of the first of the following letters is now in the possession of the Queen of England. Mr. Aaron Vail, when Chargé d'Affaires of the United States at the Court of St. James, being requested by Princess Victoria to procure her an autograph of Jefferson, applied to a member of Mr. Jefferson's family, who sent him this letter for the princess. Mr. Jefferson was at this time again a member of Congress, which was then holding its sessions in Annapolis.

Thomas Jefferson to Martha Jefferson.

Annapolis, Nov. 28th, 1783.

My dear Patsy—After four days' journey, I arrived here without any accident, and in as good health as when I left Philadelphia. The conviction that you would be more improved in the situation I have placed you than if still with me, has solaced me on my parting with you, which my love for you has rendered a difficult thing. The acquirements which I hope you will make under the tutors I have provided for you will render you more worthy of my love; and if they can not increase it, they will prevent its diminution. Consider the good lady who has taken you under her roof, who has undertaken to see that you perform all your exercises, and to admonish you in all those wanderings from what is right or what is clever, to which your inexperience would expose you: consider her, I say, as your mother, as the only person to whom, since the loss with which Heaven has pleased to afflict you, you can now look up; and that her displeasure or disapprobation, on any occasion, will be an immense misfortune, which should you be so unhappy as to incur by any unguarded act, think no concession too much to regain her good-will. With respect to the distribution of your time, the following is what I should approve:

From 8 to 10, practice music.

From 10 to 1, dance one day and draw another.

From 1 to 2, draw on the day you dance, and write a letter next day.

From 3 to 4, read French.

From 4 to 5, exercise yourself in music.

From 5 till bed-time, read English, write, etc.

Communicate this plan to Mrs. Hopkinson, and if she approves of it, pursue it. As long as Mrs. Trist remains in Philadelphia, cultivate her affection. She has been a valuable friend to you, and her good sense and good heart make her valued by all who know her, and by nobody on earth more than me. I expect you will write me by every post. Inform me what books you read, what tunes you learn, and inclose me your best copy of every lesson in drawing. Write also one letter a week either to your Aunt Eppes, your Aunt Skipwith, your Aunt Carr, or the little lady[24] from whom I now inclose a letter, and always put the letter you so write under cover to me. Take care that you never spell a word wrong. Always before you write a word, consider how it is spelt, and, if you do not remember it, turn to a dictionary. It produces great praise to a lady to spell well. I have placed my happiness on seeing you good and accomplished; and no distress which this world can now bring on me would equal that of your disappointing my hopes. If you love me, then strive to be good under every situation and to all living creatures, and to acquire those accomplishments which I have put in your power, and which will go far towards ensuring you the warmest love of your affectionate father,

TH. JEFFERSON.

P.S.—Keep my letters and read them at times, that you may always have present in your mind those things which will endear you to me.

Thomas Jefferson to Martha Jefferson.—[Extract.][25]

Annapolis, Dec. 11th, 1783.

I hope you will have good sense enough to disregard those foolish predictions that the world is to be at an end soon. The Almighty has never made known to any body at what time he created it; nor will he tell any body when he will put an end to it, if he ever means to do it. As to preparations for that event, the best way is for you always to be prepared for it. The only way to be so is, never to say or do a bad thing. If ever you are about to say any thing amiss, or to do any thing wrong, consider beforehand you will feel something within you which will tell you it is wrong, and ought not to be said or done. This is your conscience, and be sure and obey it. Our Maker has given us all this faithful internal monitor, and if you always obey it you will always be prepared for the end of the world; or for a much more certain event, which is death. This must happen to all; it puts an end to the world as to us; and the way to be ready for it is never to do a wrong act.

Thomas Jefferson to Martha Jefferson.—[Extract.]

Annapolis, Dec. 22d, 1783.

I omitted in that letter to advise you on the subject of dress, which I know you are a little apt to neglect. I do not wish you to be gaily clothed at this time of life, but that your wear should be fine of its kind. But above all things and at all times let your clothes be neat, whole, and properly put on. Do not fancy you must wear them till the dirt is visible to the eye. You will be the last one who is sensible of this. Some ladies think they may, under the privileges of the déshabillé, be loose and negligent of their dress in the morning. But be you, from the moment you rise till you go to bed, as cleanly and properly dressed as at the hours of dinner or tea. A lady who has been seen as a sloven or a slut in the morning, will never efface the impression she has made, with all the dress and pageantry she can afterwards involve herself in. Nothing is so disgusting to our sex as a want of cleanliness and delicacy in yours. I hope, therefore, the moment you rise from bed, your first work will be to dress yourself in such style, as that you may be seen by any gentleman without his being able to discover a pin amiss, or any other circumstance of neatness wanting.

Thomas Jefferson to Martha Jefferson.

Annapolis, Jan. 15th, 1783.

My dear Martha—I am anxious to know what books you read, what tunes you play, and to receive specimens of your drawing. With respect to your meeting M. Simitière[26] at Mr. Rittenhouse's, nothing could give me more pleasure than your being much with that worthy family, wherein you will see the best examples of rational life, and learn to esteem and copy them. But I should be very tender of intruding you on the family; as it might, perhaps, be not always convenient for you to be there at your hours of attending M. Simitière. I can only say, then, that if it has been desired by Mr. and Mrs. Rittenhouse, in such a manner as that Mrs. Hopkinson shall be satisfied that they will not think it inconvenient, I would have you thankfully accept it; and conduct yourself with so much attention to the family as that they may never feel themselves incommoded by it. I hope Mrs. Hopkinson will be so good as to act for you in this matter with that delicacy and prudence of which she is so capable. I have much at heart your learning to draw, and should be uneasy at your losing this opportunity, which probably is your last.

Thomas Jefferson to Martha Jefferson.—[Extract.]

Annapolis, February 18th, 1784.

I am sorry M. Simitière can not attend you, because it is probable you will never have another opportunity of learning to draw, and it is a pretty and pleasing accomplishment. With respect to the payment of the guinea, I would wish him to receive it; because if there is to be a doubt between him and me which of us acts rightly, I would wish to remove it clearly off my own shoulders. You must thank Mrs. Hopkinson for me for the trouble she gave herself in this matter; from which she will be relieved by paying M. Simitière his demand.

In the spring of this year (1784) Mr. Jefferson received definite orders from Congress to go to Europe as Minister Plenipotentiary, and act in conjunction with Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams in negotiating treaties of commerce with foreign nations. He accordingly sailed in July, taking with him his young daughter Martha. The following description of his voyage, establishment in Paris and life there, is from her pen. The other two children, Mary and Lucy Elizabeth, were left with their good aunt, Mrs. Eppes. Mrs. Randolph says, in her manuscript:

He sailed from Boston in a ship of Colonel Tracy's (the Ceres, Capt. St. Barbe); the passengers—only six in number—of whom Colonel Tracy himself was one, were to a certain degree select, being chosen from many applying. The voyage was as pleasant as fine weather, a fine ship, good company, and an excellent table could make it. From land to land they were only nineteen days, of which they were becalmed three on the Banks of Newfoundland, which were spent in cod-fishing. The epicures of the cabin feasted on fresh tongues and sounds, leaving the rest of the fish for the sailors, of which much was thrown overboard for want of salt to preserve it. We were landed at Portsmouth, where he was detained a week by the illness of his little travelling companion, suffering from the effects of the voyage. Nothing worthy of note occurred on the voyage or journey to Paris.

On his first arrival in Paris he occupied rooms in the Hôtel d'Orléans, Rue des Petits Augustins, until a house could be got ready for him. His first house was in the Cul-de-sac Têtebout, near the Boulevards. At the end of the year he removed to a house belonging to M. le Comte de L'Avongeac, at the corner of the Grande Route des Champs Elysées and the Rue Neuve de Berry, where he continued as long as he remained in Paris. Colonel Humphreys, the secretary of legation, and Mr. Short, his private secretary, both lived with him. The house was a very elegant one even for Paris, with an extensive garden, court, and outbuildings, in the handsomest style.

He also had rooms in the Carthusian Monastery on Mount Calvary; the boarders, of whom I think there were forty, carried their own servants, and took their breakfasts in their own rooms. They assembled to dinner only. They had the privilege of walking in the gardens, but as it was a hermitage, it was against the rules of the house for any voices to be heard outside of their own rooms, hence the most profound silence. The author of Anacharsis was a boarder at the time, and many others who had reasons for a temporary retirement from the world. Whenever he had a press of business, he was in the habit of taking his papers and going to the hermitage, where he spent sometimes a week or more till he had finished his work. The hermits visited him occasionally in Paris, and the Superior made him a present of an ivory broom that was turned by one of the brothers.

His habits of study in Paris were pretty much what they were elsewhere. He was always a very early riser and the whole morning was spent in business, generally writing till one o'clock, with the exception of a short respite afforded by the breakfast-table, at which he frequently lingered, conversing willingly at such times. At one o'clock he always rode or walked as far as seven miles into the country. Returning from one of these rambles, he was on one occasion joined by some friend, and being earnestly engaged in conversation he fell and broke his wrist. He said nothing at the moment, but holding the suffering limb with the other hand, he continued the conversation until he arrived near to his own house, when, informing his companion of the accident, he left him to send for the surgeon. The fracture was a complicated one and probably much swollen before the arrival of the surgeon; but it was not set, and remained ever after weak and stiff. While disabled by this accident he was in the habit of writing with his left hand, in which he soon became tolerably expert—the writing being well-formed but stiff. A few years before his death another fall deprived him in like manner of the use of his left hand, which rendered him very helpless in his hands, particularly for writing, which latterly became very slow and painful to him.... He kept me with him till I was sent to a convent in Paris, where his visits to me were daily for the first month or two, till in fact I recovered my spirits.

Nothing could have been more congenial or delightful to him than the society in which Jefferson moved in Paris. At the head of an elegant establishment, as an American and the friend of Lafayette, his house was the favorite resort of all the accomplished and gallant young French officers who had enthusiastically taken up arms in defense of the great cause of liberty in the New World; while as a philosopher and the author of the "Notes on Virginia," his society was sought for and enjoyed by the most distinguished savants and men of science, who thronged from all parts of Europe to the great French capital. Nor were the ease and grace of his address, the charms of his eloquent conversation, and the varied extent of his learning, lost upon the witty and handsome women who were found at the court of the amiable young Louis the Sixteenth and of his queen, the lovely Marie Antoinette—so sadly pre-eminent for beauty and misfortune. His social intercourse with them, and the pleasant friendships formed for many, we discover in his gracefully-written letters to them.

Mr. and Mrs. John Adams were in Paris with Jefferson, and Mrs. Adams pays a graceful tribute to his talents and worth in her letters home, and in one of them speaks of him as being one of the "choice ones of the earth." His intercourse with his two colleagues, Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams, was of the most delightful character, and by both he was sincerely loved and esteemed. The friendship then formed between Mr. Adams and himself withstood, in after years, all the storms and bitterness of political life, at a time when, perhaps, party feeling and prejudice ran higher than ever before.

When Franklin returned home, loaded with all the honors and love that the admiration of the French people could lavish on him, Jefferson was appointed to take his place as Minister from the United States at the Court of St. Germains. "You replace Dr. Franklin," said Count de Vergennes, the French Premier, to him—"I succeed him; no one could replace him," was Jefferson's ready reply. Perhaps no greater proof of Jefferson's popularity in Paris could be given, than the fact that he so soon became a favorite in that learned and polished society in which the great Franklin had been the lion of the day. I quote from Jefferson's writings the following anecdotes of Franklin, which the reader will not find out of place here:

When Dr. Franklin went to France on his revolutionary mission, his eminence as a philosopher, his venerable appearance, and the cause on which he was sent, rendered him extremely popular—for all ranks and conditions of men there entered warmly into the American interest. He was, therefore, feasted and invited to all the court parties. At these he sometimes met the old Duchess of Bourbon, who being a chess-player of about his force, they very generally played together. Happening once to put her king into prise, the Doctor took it. "Ah," says she, "we do not take kings so." "We do in America," said the Doctor.

At one of these parties the Emperor Joseph II., then at Paris incog. under the title of Count Falkenstein, was overlooking the game in silence, while the company was engaged in animated conversations on the American question. "How happens it, M. le Comte," said the Duchess, "that while we all feel so much interest in the cause of the Americans, you say nothing for them?" "I am a king by trade," said he.

The Doctor told me at Paris the following anecdote of the Abbé Raynal: He had a party to dine with him one day at Passy, of whom one half were Americans, the other half French, and among the last was the Abbé. During the dinner he got on his favorite theory of the degeneracy of animals and even of man in America, and urged it with his usual eloquence. The Doctor, at length noticing the accidental stature and position of his guests at table, "Come," says he, "M. l'Abbé, let us try this question by the fact before us. We are here, one half Americans and one half French, and it happens that the Americans have placed themselves on one side of the table, and our French friends are on the other. Let both parties rise, and we will see on which side nature has degenerated." It happened that his American guests were Carmichael, Harmer, Humphreys, and others of the finest stature and form; while those of the other side were remarkably diminutive, and the Abbé himself, particularly, was a mere shrimp. He parried the appeal, however, by a complimentary admission of exceptions, among which the Doctor himself was a conspicuous one.

The following interesting quotations from Mrs. Adams's letters, in which she alludes to Mr. Jefferson, will be found interesting here. To her sister she writes:

There is now a court mourning, and every foreign minister, with his family, must go into mourning for a Prince of eight years old, whose father is an ally to the King of France. This mourning is ordered by the Court, and is to be worn eleven days only. Poor Mr. Jefferson had to hie away for a tailor to get a whole black silk suit made up in two days; and at the end of eleven days, should another death happen, he will be obliged to have a new suit of mourning of cloth, because that is the season when silk must be left off.

To her niece Mrs. Adams writes:

Well, my dear niece, I have returned from Mr. Jefferson's. When I got there I found a pretty large company. It consisted of the Marquis and Madame de Lafayette; the Count and Countess de ——; a French Count who had been a general in America, but whose name I forget; Commodore Jones; Mr. Jarvis, an American gentleman lately arrived (the same who married Amelia B——), who says there is so strong a likeness between your cousin and his lady, that he is obliged to be upon his guard lest he should think himself at home, and commit some mistake—he appears a very sensible, agreeable gentleman; a Mr. Bowdoin, an American also; I ask the Chevalier de la Luzerne's pardon—I had like to have forgotten him; Mr. Williams, of course, as he always dines with Mr. Jefferson; and Mr. Short—though one of Mr. Jefferson's family, as he has been absent some time I name him. He took a resolution that he would go into a French family at St. Germain, and acquire the language; and this is the only way for a foreigner to obtain it. I have often wished that I could not hear a word of English spoken. I think I have mentioned Mr. Short before, in some of my letters; he is about the stature of Mr. Tudor; a better figure, but much like him in looks and manners; consequently a favorite of mine.

They have some customs very curious here. When company are invited to dine, if twenty gentlemen meet, they seldom or never sit down, but are standing or walking from one part of the room to the other, with their swords on, and their chapeau de bras, which is a very small silk hat, always worn under the arm. These they lay aside while they dine, but reassume them immediately after. I wonder how the fashion of standing crept in among a nation who really deserve the appellation of polite; for in winter it shuts out all the fire from the ladies; I know I have suffered from it many times.

At dinner, the ladies and gentlemen are mixed, and you converse with him who sits next you, rarely speaking to two persons across the table, unless to ask if they will be served with any thing from your side. Conversation is never general as with us; for, when the company quit the table, they fall into tête-à-tête of two and two, when the conversation is in a low voice, and a stranger unacquainted with the customs of the country, would think that every body had private business to transact.

Mrs. Adams writes to her sister:

We see as much company in a formal way as our revenues will admit; and Mr. Jefferson, with one or two Americans, visits us in the social, friendly way. I shall really regret to leave Mr. Jefferson; he is one of the choice ones of the earth. On Thursday, I dine with him at his house. On Sunday he is to dine here. On Monday we all dine with the Marquis.

The intimate and friendly relations which existed between Mr. Jefferson and Mrs. Adams's family is seen from the following playful note from him to her daughter, Mrs. Smith:

Mr. Jefferson has the honor to present his compliments to Mrs. Smith and to send her the two pair of corsets she desired. He wishes they may be suitable, as Mrs. Smith omitted to send her measure. Times are altered since Mademoiselle de Sanson had the honor of knowing her; should they be too small, however, she will be so good as to lay them by a while. There are ebbs as well as flows in this world. When the mountain refused to come to Mahomet, he went to the mountain. Mr. Jefferson wishes Mrs. Smith a happy new-year, and abundance of happier ones still to follow it. He begs leave to assure her of his esteem and respect, and that he shall always be happy to be rendered useful to her by being charged with her Commands.

Paris, Jan. 15, 1787.

[CHAPTER V.]

Jefferson's first Impressions of Europe.—Letter to Mrs. Trist.—To Baron De Geismer.—He visits England.—Letter to his Daughter.—To his Sister.—Extract from his Journal kept when in England.—Letter to John Page.—Presents a Bust of Lafayette to chief Functionaries of Paris.—Breaks his Wrist.—Letter to Mrs. Trist.—Mr. and Mrs. Cosway.—Correspondence with Mrs. Cosway.—Letter to Colonel Carrington.—To Mr. Madison.—To Mrs. Bingham.—Her Reply.

Jefferson's first impressions of Europe and of the French are found in the following extracts from his letters written to America at that time:

Extract from a Letter to Mrs. Trist.

Paris, August 18th, 1785.

I am much pleased with the people of this country. The roughnesses of the human mind are so thoroughly rubbed off with them, that it seems as if one might glide through a whole life among them without a jostle. Perhaps, too, their manners may be the best calculated for happiness to a people in their situation, but I am convinced they fall far short of effecting a happiness so temperate, so uniform, and so lasting as is generally enjoyed with us. The domestic bonds here are absolutely done away, and where can their compensation be found? Perhaps they may catch some moments of transport above the level of the ordinary tranquil joy we experience, but they are separated by long intervals, during which all the passions are at sea without a rudder or a compass. Yet, fallacious as the pursuits of happiness are, they seem, on the whole, to furnish the most effectual abstraction from the contemplation of the hardness of their government. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive how so good a people, with so good a king, so well-disposed rulers in general, so genial a climate, so fertile a soil, should be rendered so ineffectual for producing human happiness by one single curse—that of a bad form of government. But it is a fact in spite of the mildness of their governors, the people are ground to powder by the vices of the form of government. Of twenty millions of people supposed to be in France, I am of opinion there are nineteen millions more wretched, more accursed, in every circumstance of human existence, than the most conspicuously wretched individual of the whole United States. I beg your pardon for getting into politics. I will add only one sentiment more of that character—that is, nourish peace with their persons, but war against their manners. Every step we take towards the adoption of their manners is a step to perfect misery.

In a fit of homesickness, he writes to the Baron de Geismer, Sept. 6:

To Baron de Geismer.

I am now of an age which does not easily accommodate itself to new modes of living and new manners; and I am savage enough to prefer the woods, the wilds and independence of Monticello, to all the brilliant pleasures of this gay capital. I shall, therefore, rejoin myself to my native country with new attachments and exaggerated esteem for its advantages; for though there is less wealth there, there is more freedom, more ease, and less misery. I should like it better, however, if it could tempt you once more to visit it; but that is not to be expected. Be this as it may, and whether fortune means to allow or deny me the pleasure of ever seeing you again, be assured that the worth which gave birth to my attachment, and which still animates it, will continue to keep it up while we both live, and that it is with sincerity I subscribe myself, etc., etc.

Early in the month of March of the following year (1786) Mr. Jefferson went for a short while to England. Before leaving, he wrote a letter of adieu to his daughter Martha, then at school in a convent in Paris. The following is an extract from this letter:

To Martha Jefferson.—[Extract.]

Paris, March 6th, 1786.

I need not tell you what pleasure it gives me to see you improve in every thing useful and agreeable. The more you learn the more I love you; and I rest the happiness of my life on seeing you beloved by all the world, which you will be sure to be, if to a good heart you join those accomplishments so peculiarly pleasing in your sex. Adieu, my dear child; lose no moment in improving your head, nor any opportunity of exercising your heart in benevolence.

The following letter to his sister proves him to have been as devoted and thoughtful a brother as father:

To Ann S. Jefferson.

London, April 22d, 1786.

My dear Nancy—Being called here for a short time, and finding that I could get some articles on terms here of which I thought you might be in want, I have purchased them for you. They are two pieces of linen, three gowns, and some ribbon. They are done up in paper, sealed, and packed in a trunk, in which I have put some other things for Colonel Nicholas Lewis. They will of course go to him, and he will contrive them to you. I heard from Patsy a few days ago; she was well. I left her in France, as my stay here was to be short. I hope my dear Polly is on her way to me. I desired you always to apply to Mr. Lewis for what you should want; but should you at any time wish any thing particular from France, write to me and I will send it to you. Doctor Currie can always forward your letters. Pray remember me to my sisters Carr and Bolling, to Mr. Bolling and their families, and be assured of the sincerity with which I am, my dear Nancy, your affectionate brother,

TH. JEFFERSON.

While in England, Jefferson visited many places of interest there, and kept a short journal, of which we give the heading, and from which we make one quotation:

Extract from Journal.

A Tour to some of the Gardens of England.

Memorandums made on a Tour to some of the Gardens in England, described by Whately in his Book on Gardening.

While his descriptions, in point of style, are models of perfect elegance and classical correctness, they are as remarkable for their exactness. I always walked over the gardens with his book in my hand, examined with attention the particular spots which he described, found them so justly characterized by him as to be easily recognized, and saw with wonder that his fine imagination had never been able to seduce him from the truth. My inquiries were directed chiefly to such practical things as might enable me to estimate the expense of making and maintaining a garden in that style. My journey was in the months of March and April, 1786....

Blenheim.—Twenty-five hundred acres, of which two hundred is garden, one hundred and fifty water, twelve kitchen-garden, and the rest park. Two hundred people employed to keep it in order, and to make alterations and additions. About fifty of these employed in pleasure-grounds. The turf is mowed once in ten days. In summer, about two thousand fallow-deer in the park, and two or three thousand sheep. The palace of Henry II. was remaining till taken down by Sarah, widow of the first Duke of Marlborough. It was on a round spot levelled by art, near what is now water, and but a little above it. The island was a part of the high-road leading to the palace. Rosamond's Bower was near where now is a little grove, about two hundred yards from the palace. The well is near where the bower was. The water here is very beautiful and very grand. The cascade from the lake is a fine one; except this the garden has no great beauties. It is not laid out in fine lawns and woods, but the trees are scattered thinly over the ground, and every here and there small thickets of shrubs, in oval raised beds, cultivated, and flowers among the shrubs. The gravelled walks are broad; art appears too much. There are but a few seats in it, and nothing of architecture more dignified. There is no one striking position in it. There has been great addition to the length of the river since Whately wrote.

In a letter written, after his return to Paris, to his old friend, John Page, of Virginia, Mr. Jefferson speaks thus of England:

To John Page.

I returned but three or four days ago from a two months' trip to England. I traversed that country much, and must own both town and country fell short of my expectations. Comparing it with this, I have found a much greater proportion of barrens, a soil, in other parts, not naturally so good as this, not better cultivated, but better manured, and therefore more productive. This proceeds from the practice of long leases there, and short ones here. The laboring people are poorer here than in England. They pay about one half of their produce in rent, the English in general about one third. The gardening in that country is the article in which it excels all the earth. I mean their pleasure-gardening. This, indeed, went far beyond my ideas. The city of London, though handsomer than Paris, is not so handsome as Philadelphia. Their architecture is in the most wretched style I ever saw, not meaning to except America, where it is bad, nor even Virginia, where it is worse than any other part of America which I have seen. The mechanical arts in London are carried to a wonderful perfection.

His faithful little pocket account-book informs us that he paid, "for seeing house where Shakspeare was born, 1s.; seeing his tomb, 1s.; entertainment, 4s. 2d.; servants, 2s."

In the fall of this year Jefferson, on behalf of the State of Virginia, presented to the city authorities of Paris a bust of his distinguished friend, the Marquis de Lafayette, which was inaugurated with all due form and ceremony and placed in the Hôtel de Ville. A few months later he wrote the following letter:

To Mrs. Trist.

Dear Madam—I have duly received your friendly letter of July 24, and received it with great pleasure, as I do all those you do me the favor to write me. If I have been long in acknowledging the receipt, the last cause to which it should be ascribed would be want of inclination. Unable to converse with my friends in person, I am happy when I do it in black and white. The true cause of the delay has been an unlucky dislocation of my wrist, which has disabled me from writing three months. I only begin to write a little now, but with pain. I wish, while in Virginia, your curiosity had led you on to James River. At Richmond you would have seen your old friends, Mr. and Mrs. Randolph, and a little farther you would have become acquainted with my friend, Mrs. Eppes, whom you would have found among the most amiable women on earth. I doubt whether you would ever have got away from her. This trip would have made you better acquainted too with my lazy and hospitable countrymen, and you would have found that their character has some good traits mixed with some feeble ones. I often wish myself among them, as I am here burning the candle of life without present pleasure or future object. A dozen or twenty years ago this scene would have amused me; but I am past the age for changing habits. I take all the fault on myself, as it is impossible to be among a people who wish more to make one happy—a people of the very best character it is possible for one to have. We have no idea in America of the real French character; with some true samples we have had many false ones....

Living from day to day, without a plan for four-and-twenty hours to come, I form no catalogue of impossible events. Laid up in port for life, as I thought myself at one time, I am thrown out to sea, and an unknown one to me. By so slender a thread do all our plans of life hang! My hand denies itself farther, every letter admonishing me, by a pain, that it is time to finish, but my heart would go on in expressing to you all its friendship. The happiest moments it knows are those in which it is pouring forth its affections to a few esteemed characters. I will pray you to write to me often. I wish to know that you enjoy health and that you are happy. Present me in the most friendly terms to your mother and brother, and be assured of the sincerity of the esteem with which I am, dear madam, your affectionate friend and humble servant,

TH. JEFFERSON.

Among the many pleasant friendships formed by Jefferson in Paris, there was none that he prized more than that of Mr. and Mrs. Cosway. Both were artists; but the husband was an Englishman, while the wife was born under the more genial skies of Italy. Possessing all that grace and beauty which seem to be the unfailing birthright of an Italian, she united to a bright and well-cultivated intellect great charms of manner and sweetness of disposition. Her Southern warmth of manner, and the brilliancy of her wit and conversation, were fascinations which few could resist, and which made her one of the queens of Parisian society. In Jefferson she found a congenial friend, and held his worth, his genius, and his learning in the highest estimation. When her husband and herself left Paris, she opened a correspondence with him, and it was at the beginning of this correspondence that he addressed to her that beautiful and gracefully written letter, called the "Dialogue between the Head and Heart," which is found in both editions of his published correspondence. Mrs. Cosway's own letters are sprightly and entertaining. I have lying before me the originals of some that she wrote to Jefferson, from which I give the following extracts, only reminding the reader that they are written in a language which to her was foreign, though the Italian idiom adds grace and freshness to the sweet simplicity of these letters. Many of them are without date.

Mrs. Cosway to Thomas Jefferson.

Paris, ——, 1786.

You don't always judge by appearances, or it would be much to my disadvantage this day, without deserving it; it has been the day of contradiction. I meant to have seen you twice, and I have appeared a monster for not having sent to know how you were the whole day.[27] I have been more uneasy than I can express. This morning my husband killed my project I had proposed to him, by burying himself among pictures and forgetting the hours. Though we were near your house, coming to see you, we were obliged to come back, the time being much past that we were to be at St. Cloud, to dine with the Duchess of Kingston. Nothing was to hinder us from coming in the evening, but, alas! my good intentions proved only a disturbance to your neighbors, and just late enough to break the rest of all your servants, and perhaps yourself. I came home with the disappointment of not having been able to make my apologies in propria persona. I hope you feel my distress instead of accusing me; the one I deserve, the other not. We will come to see you to-morrow morning, if nothing happens to prevent it. Oh! I wish you were well enough to come to us to-morrow to dinner, and stay the evening. I won't tell you what I shall have; temptations now are cruel for your situation. I only mention my wishes. If the executing them should be possible, your merit will be greater, as my satisfaction the more flattered. I would serve you and help you at dinner, and divert your pain after with good music. Sincerely your friend,

MARIA COSWAY.

Mrs. Cosway to Thomas Jefferson.

I am very sorry indeed, and blame myself for having been the cause of your pains in the wrist. Why would you go, and why was I not more friendly to you, and less so to myself by preventing your giving me the pleasure of your company? You repeatedly said it would do you no harm. I felt interested and did not insist. We shall go, I believe, this morning. Nothing seems ready, but Mr. Cosway seems more disposed than I have seen him all this time. I shall write to you from England; it is impossible to be wanting to a person who has been so excessively obliging. I don't attempt to make compliments—there can be none for you, but I beg you will think us sensible to your kindness, and that it will be with exquisite pleasure I shall remember the charming days we have passed together, and shall long for next spring.

You will make me very happy if you would send a line to the poste restante at Antwerp, that I may know how you are. Believe me, dear sir, your most obliged, affectionate servant,

MARIA COSWAY.

The letter from Mr. Jefferson to Mrs. Cosway containing the "Dialogue between the Head and Heart," though too long to be given here in full, is too beautiful to be omitted altogether. I accordingly give the following extracts:

Thomas Jefferson to Mrs. Cosway.

Paris, October 12, 1786.

My dear Madam—Having performed the last sad office of handing you into your carriage at the Pavillon de St. Denis, and seen the wheels get actually in motion, I turned on my heel and walked, more dead than alive, to the opposite door, where my own was awaiting me. M. Danguerville was missing. He was sought for, found, and dragged down stairs. We were crammed into the carriage like recruits for the Bastile, and not having soul enough to give orders to the coachman, he presumed Paris our destination, and drove off. After a considerable interval, silence was broken, with a "Je suis vraiment affligé du depart de ces bons gens." This was a signal for a mutual confession of distress. He began immediately to talk of Mr. and Mrs. Cosway, of their goodness, their talents, their amiability; and though we spoke of nothing else, we seemed hardly to have entered into the matter, when the coachman announced the Rue St. Denis, and that we were opposite M. Danguerville's. He insisted on descending there and traversing a short passage to his lodgings. I was carried home. Seated by my fireside, solitary and sad, the following dialogue took place between my Head and my Heart.

Head. Well, friend, you seem to be in a pretty trim.

Heart. I am, indeed, the most wretched of all earthly beings. Overwhelmed with grief, every fibre of my frame distended beyond its natural powers to bear, I would willingly meet whatever catastrophe should leave me no more to feel, or to fear....

Head. It would have been happy for you if my diagrams and crotchets had gotten you to sleep on that day, as you are pleased to say they eternally do.... While I was occupied with these objects, you were dilating with your new acquaintances, and contriving how to prevent a separation from them. Every soul of you had an engagement for the day. Yet all these were to be sacrificed, that you might dine together. Lying messages were to be dispatched into every quarter of the city, with apologies for your breach of engagement. You, particularly, had the effrontery to send word to the Duchess Danville, that on the moment we were setting out to dine with her, dispatches came to hand which required immediate attention. You wanted me to invent a more ingenious excuse, but I knew you were getting into a scrape, and I would have nothing to do with it. Well; after dinner to St. Cloud, from St. Cloud to Ruggieri's, from Ruggieri's to Krumfoltz; and if the day had been as long as a Lapland summer day, you would still have contrived means among you to have filled it.

Heart. Oh! my dear friend, how you have revived me, by recalling to my mind the transactions of that day! How well I remember them all, and that when I came home at night, and looked back to the morning, it seemed to have been a month agone. Go on, then, like a kind comforter, and paint to me the day we went to St. Germains. How beautiful was every object! the Pont de Renilly, the hills along the Seine, the rainbows of the machine of Marly, the terras of St. Germains, the chateaux, the gardens, the statues of Marly, the pavilion of Lucienne. Recollect, too, Madrid, Bagatelle, the King's Garden, the Dessert. How grand the idea excited by the remains of such a column. The spiral staircase, too, was beautiful....

Heart. God only knows what is to happen. I see nothing impossible in that proposition:[28] and I see things wonderfully contrived sometimes, to make us happy. Where could they find such objects as in America for the exercise of their enchanting art? especially the lady, who paints landscapes so inimitably. She wants only subjects worthy of immortality to render her pencil immortal. The Falling Spring, the Cascade of Niagara, the Passage of the Potomac through the Blue Mountains, the Natural Bridge; it is worth a voyage across the Atlantic to see these objects; much more to paint, and make them, and thereby ourselves, known to all ages. And our own dear Monticello—where has Nature spread so rich a mantle under the eye?—mountains, forests, rocks, rivers. With what majesty do we ride above the storms! How sublime to look down into the workhouse of Nature, to see her clouds, hail, snow, rain, thunder, all fabricated at our feet! and the glorious sun, when rising as if out of a distant water, just gilding the tops of the mountains, and giving life to all nature! I hope in God no circumstance may ever make either seek an asylum from grief!... Deeply practiced in the school of affliction, the human heart knows no joy which I have not lost, no sorrow of which I have not drunk! Fortune can present no grief of unknown form to me! Who, then, can so softly bind up the wound of another as he who has felt the same wound himself?...

I thought this a favorable proposition whereon to rest the issue of the dialogue. So I put an end to it by calling for my night-cap. Methinks I hear you wish to Heaven I had called a little sooner, and so spared you the ennui of such a sermon.... We have had incessant rains since your departure. These make me fear for your health, as well as that you had an uncomfortable journey. The same cause has prevented me from being able to give you an account of your friends here. This voyage to Fontainebleau will probably send the Count de Moustier and the Marquis de Brehan to America. Danguerville promised to visit me but has not done it yet. De la Tude comes sometimes to take family soup with me, and entertains me with anecdotes of his five-and-thirty years' imprisonment. How fertile is the mind of man, which can make the Bastile and dungeon of Vincennes yield interesting anecdotes! You know this was for making four verses on Madame De Pompadour. But I think you told me you did not know the verses. They were these:

"Sans ésprit, sans sentiment,

Sans être belle, ni neuve,

En France on peut avoir le premier amant:

Pompadour en est l'épreuve."

I have read the memoir of his three escapes. As to myself, my health is good, except my wrist, which mends slowly, and my mind, which mends not at all, but broods constantly over your departure. The lateness of the season obliges me to decline my journey into the South of France. Present me in the most friendly terms to Mr. Cosway, and receive me into your own recollection with a partiality and warmth, proportioned not to my own poor merit, but to the sentiments of sincere affection and esteem, with which I have the honor to be, my dear Madam, your most obedient, humble servant,

TH. JEFFERSON.

The following letter, written in a sprightly and artless style, will be found more than usually interesting, from the allusion in it to Sheridan's great speech in the trial of Warren Hastings—that scene of which Macaulay's enchanted pen has left so brilliant a picture. A few awkward expressions in this charming letter remind us that its author wrote in a foreign language.

Mrs. Cosway to Thomas Jefferson.

London, February 15th, 1788.

I have the pleasure of receiving two letters from you, and though very short I must content myself, and lament much the reason that deprived me of their usual length. I must confess that the beginning of your correspondence has made me an enfant-gâtée. I shall never learn to be reasonable in my expectations, and shall feel disappointed whenever your letters are not as long as the first was; thus you are the occasion of a continual reproaching disposition in me. It is a disagreeable one, and it will tease you into a hatred towards me, notwithstanding the partiality you have had for me till now, for nothing disobliges more than a dissatisfied mind, and that my fault is occasioned by yourself you will be the most distant to allow. I trust your friendship would wish to see me perfect and mine to be so, but defects are, or are not, most conspicuous according to the feelings which we have for the objects which possess them....

I feel at present an inclination to make you an endless letter, but have not yet determined what subject to begin with. Shall I continue this reproaching style, quote all the whats and whys out of Jeremiah's Lamentations, and then present you with some outlines of Job for consolation? Of all torments, temptations, and wearinesses, the female has always been the principal and most powerful, and this is to be felt by you at present from my pen. Are you to be painted in future ages, sitting solitary and sad on the beautiful Monticello, tormented by the shadow of a woman, who will present you a deformed rod, broken and twisted, instead of the emblematical instrument belonging to the Muses, held by Genius, inspired by Wit; and with which all that is beautiful and happy can be described so as to entertain a mind capable of the highest enjoyments?...

I have written this in memoria of the many pages of scrawls addressed to you by one whose good intentions repay you for your beautiful allegories with such long, insipid chit-chat.[29]... Allegories, however, are always far-fetched, and I don't like to follow the subject, though I might find something which would explain my ideas.

Suppose I turn to the debates of Parliament? Were I a good politician, I could entertain you much. What do you think of a famous speech Sheridan has made, which lasted four hours, which has astonished every body, and which has been the subject of conversation and admiration of the whole town? Nothing has been talked of for many days but this speech. The whole House applauded him at the moment, each member complimented him when they rose, and Pitt made him the highest encomiums. Only poor Mr. Hastings suffered for the power of his eloquence, though nothing can be decided yet. Mr. H. was with Mr. Cosway at the very moment the trial was going on; he seemed perfectly easy—talking on a variety of subjects with great tranquillity and cheerfulness. The second day he was the same, but on the third seemed very much affected and agitated. All his friends give him the greatest character of humanity, generosity, and feeling; amiable in his manner, he seems, in short, totally different from the disposition of cruelty they accuse him of. Turning from parliamentary discussions, it is time to tell you that I have been reading with great pleasure your descriptions of America;[30] it is written by you, but Nature represents all the scenes to me in reality, therefore do not take any thing to yourself; I must refer to your name to make it the more valuable to me, but she is your rival—you her usurper. Oh! how I wish myself in those delightful places! those enchanted grottoes! those magnificent mountains, rivers, etc., etc., etc.! Why am I not a man, that I might set out immediately, satisfy my curiosity, and indulge my sight with wonders?

I go to very few parties. I have a dislike for them, and I have grown so excessively indolent that I do not go out for months together. All the morning I paint whatever presents itself most pleasing to me. Sometimes I have beautiful objects to paint from, and add historical characters to make them more interesting. Female and infantine beauty is the most perfect to see. Sometimes I indulge in those melancholy subjects in which History often represents herself—the horrid, the grand, the sublime, the sentimental, or the pathetic. I attempt, I exercise in them all, and end by being witness of my own disappointment and incapacity for executing the Poet, the Historian, or the conceptions of my own imagination. Thus the mornings are spent regretting they are not longer, to have more time to attempt again in search of better success, or thinking they have been too long, as they have afforded me many moments of uneasiness and anxiety, and a testimony of my not being able to do any thing.

I devote my evenings to music, and then I am much visited by the first Professors, who come to play, often every evening, something new, and are all perfect in their kind. To complete the pleasure, a small society of agreeable friends frequently come to see me, and in this manner you see that I am more attached to my home than to going in search of amusement out, where there are nothing but crowded assemblies, uncomfortable heat, and not the least pleasure in meeting any body, not being able to enjoy any conversation. The Operas are very bad, tho' Zubenelli and Madame Mosa are the first singers; the dancers, too, are very bad; all this I say from report, as I have not been yet. Pray tell me something about Madame De Polignac; they make a great deal about it here; we hardly hear any thing else, and the stories are so different from one another that it is impossible to guess the real one. She is expected in England.

I send this letter by a gentleman whom I think you will like. He is a Spaniard. I am partial to that nation, as I know several who are very agreeable. He is going to Paris as Secretary of Embassy at that Court. He has travelled much, and talks well. If I should be happy enough to come again in the summer to Paris, I hope we shall pass many agreeable days. I am in a million fears about it; Mr. Cosway still keeps to his intentions, but how many chances from our inclinations to the gratification of our wishes. Poor D'Ancarville has been very ill. I received a long letter from him appointing himself my correspondent at Paris. I know a gentleman who causes my faith to be weak on this occasion, for he flattered me with hopes that I have seen fail; nevertheless I have accepted this offer, and shall see if I find a second disappointment.

Is it not time to finish my letter? Perhaps I might go on, but I must send this to the gentleman who is to take it.

I hope you are quite well by this time, and that your hand will tell me so by a line. I must be reasonable, but give me leave to remind you how much pleasure you will give by remembering sometimes with friendship one who will be as sensible and grateful of it as is, yours sincerely,

MARIA COSWAY.

In a letter to Colonel Edward Carrington, written early in January, 1787, Jefferson thus notices the meeting of the Notables:

To Colonel Carrington.

In my letter to Mr. Jay I have mentioned the meeting of the Notables, appointed for the 29th instant. It is now put off to the 7th or 8th of next month. This event, which will hardly excite any attention in America, is deemed here the most important one which has taken place in their civil line during the present century. Some promise their country great things from it, some nothing. Our friend De Lafayette was placed on the list originally. Afterwards his name disappeared; but finally was reinstated. This shows that his character here is not considered as an indifferent one; and that it excites agitation. His education in our school has drawn on him a very jealous eye from a court whose principles are the most absolute despotism. But I hope he has nearly passed his crisis. The King, who is a good man, is favorably disposed towards him; and he is supported by powerful family connections, and by the public good-will. He is the youngest man of the Notables, except one whose office placed him on the list.

In a letter written to Madison a few days later, he gives a few sketches of character which we quote, only reminding the reader of Jefferson's great intimacy with Madison, to whom he consequently wrote more freely of men and measures than to any one else.

To James Madison.

Paris, January 30th, 1787.

As you have now returned to Congress, it will become of importance that you should form a just estimate of certain public characters, on which, therefore, I will give you such notes as my knowledge of them has furnished me with. You will compare them with the materials you are otherwise possessed of, and decide on a view of the whole.

You know the opinion I formerly entertained of my friend Mr. Adams.... A seven months' intimacy with him here, and as many weeks in London, have given me opportunities of studying him closely. He is vain, irritable, and a bad calculator of the force and probable effect of the motives which govern men. This is all the ill which can possibly be said of him. He is as disinterested as the Being who made him; he is profound in his views and accurate in his judgment, except where knowledge of the world is necessary to form a judgment. He is so amiable, that I pronounce you will love him if ever you become acquainted with him. He would be, as he was, a great man in Congress....

The Marquis de Lafayette is a most valuable auxiliary to me. His zeal is unbounded, and his weight with those in power great. His education having been merely military, commerce was an unknown field to him. But, his good sense enabling him to comprehend perfectly whatever is explained to him, his agency has been very efficacious. He has a great deal of sound genius, is well remarked by the king, and is rising in popularity. He has nothing against him but a suspicion of republican principles. I think he will one day be of the ministry. His foible is a canine appetite for popularity and fame; but he will get over this. The Count de Vergennes is ill. The possibility of his recovery renders it dangerous for us to express a doubt of it; but he is in danger. He is a great minister in European affairs, but has very imperfect ideas of our institutions, and no confidence in them. His devotion to the principles of pure despotism renders him unaffectionate to our governments. But his fear of England makes him value us as a make-weight. He is cool, reserved in political conversations, but free and familiar on other subjects, and a very attentive, agreeable person to do business with. It is impossible to have a clearer, better organized head; but age has chilled his heart.

Nothing should be spared on our part to attach this country to us. It is the only one on which we can rely for support under every event. Its inhabitants love us more, I think, than they do any other nation on earth. This is very much the effect of the good dispositions with which the French officers returned. In a former letter I mentioned to you the dislocation of my wrist. I can make not the least use of it except for the single article of writing, though it is going on five months since the accident happened. I have great anxieties lest I should never recover any considerable use of it. I shall, by the advice of my surgeons, set out in a fortnight for the waters of Aix, in Provence. I chose these out of several they proposed to me, because if they fail to be effectual, my journey will not be useless altogether. It will give me an opportunity of examining the canal of Languedoc, and of acquiring knowledge of that species of navigation, which may be useful hereafter.... I shall be absent between two and three months, unless any thing happens to recall me here sooner; which may always be effected in ten days, in whatever part of my route I may be.

In speaking of characters, I omitted those of Rayneval and Hennin, the two eyes of the Count de Vergennes. The former is the most important character, because possessing the most of the confidence of the Count. He is rather cunning than wise, his views of things being neither great nor liberal. He governs himself by principles which he has learned by rote, and is fit only for the details of execution. His heart is susceptible of little passions, but not of good ones. He is brother-in-law to M. Gerard, from whom he received disadvantageous impressions of us which can not be effaced. He has much duplicity. Hennin is a philosopher, sincere, friendly, liberal, learned, beloved by every body; the other by nobody. I think it a great misfortune that the United States are in the department of the former. As particulars of this kind may be useful to you in your present situation, I may hereafter continue the chapter. I know it will be safely lodged in your discretion. I send you by Colonel Franks your pocket-telescope, walking-stick, and chemical-box. The two former could not be combined together. The latter could not be had in the form you referred to. Having a great desire to have a portable copying-machine, and being satisfied, from some experiments, that the principle of the large machine might be applied in a small one, I planned one when in England, and had it made. It answers perfectly. I have since set a workman to making them here, and they are in such demand that he has his hands full. Being assured that you will be pleased to have one, when you shall have tried its convenience, I send you one by Colonel Franks. The machine costs ninety-six livres, the appendages twenty-four livres, and I send you paper and ink for twelve livres; in all one hundred and thirty-two livres. There is a printed paper of directions; but you must expect to make many essays before you succeed perfectly. A soft brush like a shaving-brush is more convenient than the sponge. You can get as much paper and ink as you please from London. The paper costs a guinea a ream. I am, dear sir, with sincere esteem and affection, your most humble and obedient servant,

TH. JEFFERSON.

The following charmingly written letter to one of his lady friends gives a spirited picture of the life of a Parisian belle:

To Mrs. Bingham.

Paris, February 7th, 1787.

I know, Madam, that the twelvemonth is not yet expired; but it will be, nearly, before this will have the honor of being put into your hands. You are then engaged to tell me, truly and honestly, whether you do not find the tranquil pleasures of America preferable to the empty bustle of Paris. For to what does the bustle tend? At eleven o'clock it is day, chez madame. The curtains are drawn. Propped on bolsters and pillows, and her head scratched into a little order, the bulletins of the sick are read, and the billets of the well. She writes to some of her acquaintances, and receives the visits of others. If the morning is not very thronged, she is able to get out and hobble around the cage of the Palais Royal; but she must hobble quickly, for the coiffeur's turn is come; and a tremendous turn it is! Happy if he does not make her arrive when dinner is half over! The torpitude of digestion a little passed, she flutters for half an hour through the streets, by way of paying visits, and then to the spectacles. These finished, another half-hour is devoted to dodging in and out of the doors of her very sincere friends, and away to supper. After supper, cards; and after cards, bed—to rise at noon the next day, and to tread, like a mill-horse, the same trodden circle over again. Thus the days of life are consumed, one by one, without an object beyond the present moment; ever flying from the ennui of that, yet carrying it with us; eternally in pursuit of happiness, which keeps eternally before us. If death or bankruptcy happen to trip us out of the circle, it is matter for the buzz of the evening, and is completely forgotten by the next morning. In America, on the other hand, the society of your husband, the fond cares for the children, the arrangements of the house, the improvements of the grounds, fill every moment with a useful and healthy activity. Every exertion is encouraging, because to present amusement it joins the promise of some future good. The intervals of leisure are filled by the society of real friends, whose affections are not thinned to cobweb, by being spread over a thousand objects. This is the picture, in the light it is presented to my mind; now let me have it in yours. If we do not concur this year, we shall the next; or if not then, in a year or two more. You see I am determined not to suppose myself mistaken.

To let you see that Paris is not changed in its pursuits since it was honored with your presence, I send you its monthly history. But this relating only to the embellishments of their persons, I must add, that those of the city go on well also. A new bridge, for example, is begun at the Place Louis Quinze; the old ones are clearing of the rubbish which encumbered them in the form of houses; new hospitals erecting; magnificent walls of inclosure, and custom-houses at their entrances, etc., etc. I know of no interesting change among those whom you have honored with your acquaintance, unless Monsieur de Saint James was of that number. His bankruptcy, and taking asylum in the Bastile, have furnished matter of astonishment. His garden at the Pont de Neuilly, where, on seventeen acres of ground, he had laid out fifty thousand louis, will probably sell for somewhat less money. The workmen of Paris are making rapid strides towards English perfection. Would you believe that, in the course of the last two years, they have learned even to surpass their London rivals in some articles? Commission me to have you a phaeton made, and if it is not as much handsomer than a London one as that is than a fiacre, send it back to me. Shall I fill the box with caps, bonnets, etc.?—not of my own choosing, but—I was going to say—of Mademoiselle Bertin's, forgetting for the moment that she too is bankrupt. They shall be chosen, then, by whom you please; or, if you are altogether nonplused by her eclipse, we will call an Assemblée des Notables, to help you out of the difficulty, as is now the fashion. In short, honor me with your commands of any kind, and they shall be faithfully executed. The packets now established from Havre to New York furnish good opportunities of sending whatever you wish.

I shall end where I began, like a Paris day, reminding you of your engagement to write me a letter of respectable length, an engagement the more precious to me, as it has furnished me the occasion, after presenting my respects to Mr. Bingham, of assuring you of the sincerity of those sentiments of esteem and respect with which I have the honor to be, dear Madam, your most obedient and most humble servant,

TH. JEFFERSON.

Mrs. Bingham to Thomas Jefferson.

June 1st, 1787.

I am too much flattered by the honor of your letter from Paris not to acknowledge it by the earliest opportunity, and to assure you that I am very sensible of your attentions. The candor with which you express your sentiments merits a sincere declaration of mine. I agree with you that many of the fashionable pursuits of the Parisian ladies are rather frivolous, and become uninteresting to a reflective mind; but the picture you have exhibited is rather overcharged; you have thrown a strong light upon all that is ridiculous in their characters, and you have buried their good qualities in the shade. It shall be my task to bring them forward, or at least to attempt it. The state of society in different countries requires corresponding manners and qualifications. Those of the French women are by no means calculated for the meridian of America, neither are they adapted to render the sex so amiable or agreeable in the English acceptation of those words. But you must confess that they are more accomplished, and understand the intercourse of society better, than in any other country. We are irresistibly pleased with them, because they possess the happy art of making us pleased with ourselves. Their education is of a higher cast, and by great cultivation they procure a happy variety of genius, which forms their conversation to please either the fop or the philosopher.

In what other country can be found a Marquise de Coigny, who, young and handsome, takes a lead in all the fashionable dissipations of life, and at more serious moments collects at her house an assembly of the literati, whom she charms with her knowledge and her bel esprit. The women of France interfere with the politics of the country, and often give a decided turn to the fate of empires. Either by the gentle arts of persuasion, or the commanding force of superior attractions and address, they have obtained that rank and consideration in society which the sex are entitled to, and which they in vain contend for in other countries. We are therefore bound in gratitude to admire and revere them for asserting our privileges, as much as the friends of the liberties of mankind reverence the successful struggles of the American patriots.

The agreeable resources of Paris must certainly please and instruct every class of characters. The arts of elegance are there considered as essential, and are carried to a state of perfection, and there the friend of art is continually gratified by the admiration for works of taste. I have the pleasure of knowing you too well to doubt of your subscribing to this opinion. With respect to my native country, I assure you that I am fervently attached to it, as well as to my friends and connections in it; there, perhaps, there is more sincerity in professions, and a stronger desire of rendering real services, and when the mouth expresses the heart speaks.

I am sensible that I shall tire you to death with the length of this letter, and had almost forgotten that you are in Paris, and that every instant of your time is valuable, and might be much better employed than I can possibly do it. However, I shall reserve a further examination of this subject to the period when I can have the happiness of meeting you, when we will again resume it. I feel myself under many obligations for your kind present of les modes de Paris. They have furnished our ladies with many hints for the decoration of their persons, and I have informed them to whom they are indebted. I shall benefit by your obliging offer of service, whenever I shall have occasion for a fresh importation of fashions; at present I am well stocked, having lately received a variety of articles from Paris.

Be so kind as to remember me with affection to Miss Jefferson. Tell her she is the envy of all the young ladies in America, and that I should wish nothing so much as to place my little girl under her inspection and protection, should she not leave Paris before I revisit it. I shall hope for the pleasure of hearing from you, and if you accompany another book of fashions with any new operas or comedies you will infinitely oblige me. It is quite time I bade you adieu; but remember this first of June I am constant to my former opinion, nor can I believe that any length of time will change it. I am determined to have some merit in your eyes, if not for taste and judgment, at least for consistency. Allow me to say, my dear sir, that I am sincerely and respectfully yours,

A. BINGHAM.

[CHAPTER VI.]