Should my health permit, which has varied a little the wrong way latterly, I will endeavor to point to some of the errors of "Mutius," if not of Mr. T. also, in the views they have taken of my political career.

Dr. Mason and his companion called on me last evening and left me this morning, duly impressed with their title to your introduction. I learnt from them, that, with Mrs. Rives, you will soon be under weigh [way?] for the Springs, and, of course, for some time beyond any communication with you. I hope the excursion will have every advantage in confirming your health. We are glad to understand that the health of Mrs. Rives needs no aid of any sort. Mrs. Madison joins in respectful and affectionate salutations to you both.

TO GALES & SEATON.

AUGUST 5, 1833.

I have received your letter of the 29th ult. The task in which you are engaged is a very interesting one, and I should feel much pleasure in aiding your researches for the necessary materials. But my recollections are very barren.

I know of no "debates" during the period of Lloyd's, but his, which are very defective and abound in errors, some of them very gross, where the speeches were not revised by the authors. If there be any depositories of what passed, they must be the cotemporary newspapers or periodicals, to be found, I presume, in public Libraries. Whilst Congress sat in New York, Fenno was the printer most to be looked to. On the removal to Philadelphia, Freneau's National Gazette was the favorite of the other party, and contains reports of the debates, at least in some instances, when the speakers revised them. Whether the same be not in Fenno, also, or in other Gazettes of the day, or republished in Carey's Museum, or other periodicals, I cannot say. If there be any difference between Freneau and Fenno in a speech of mine, Freneau gives the correct one. Freneau's Ga

zette, I should suppose, would be among the bound newspapers in the Library of Mr. Jefferson, now in that of Congress. Callender and Carpenter took the debates at one period; but they probably make a part of those published by Fenno, Brown, Dunlap, and Duane.

I do not possess a manuscript copy of a single speech, having never written one beforehand, nor corrected the reporter's notes of one beyond making it faithful in substance, and to be reported as such in the third, not in the first person.

You yielded too much to an apprehension that a visit might not in my condition be convenient to me. You would have been welcomed with the respect and cordiality of which I now beg you to accept the assurance.

TO THOMAS S. GRIMKE.

AUGUST 10, 1833.

DR SIR, I owe you many thanks for the several communications with which you have from time to time favored me since the date of my last; and I owe you many apologies for the delay in acknowledging them. The last favors just received are your "Oration on the 4th of July," and your "letter on temperance." In all of them I recognise the same ability, accurate information, and eloquence, the same vein of patriotic solicitude and Christian benevolence, by which your pen has always been characterized. My present knowledge has discovered a few errors of fact in some of the political passages, which future lights may correct.

I owe you a special apology for so long failing to comply with your request on the subject of autographs. I must do myself the justice, at the same time, of saying that I have never entirely lost sight of it. But the thief, "procrastination," has taken advantage of the clumsiness of my rheumatic hands, the crowd of my epistolary files, and the uncertainty as to the names which you may already possess. If you will be so obliging as to make a note of these, I will add with real pleasure such of

those deemed worthy of selection as my pigeon-holes will now furnish.

I congratulate you on the effect of the comprising [compromising] anodyne adopted by Congress. I hope it will keep the patient quiet, notwithstanding the renewed attempts to disturb him, till the "vis medicatrix" of time and a good constitution shall produce a permanent state of health.

TO MAJOR H. LEE.

AUGUST 14, 1833.

SIR, I have received your letter of June 5th under cover of one to Mr. P. A. Jay, of New York. I find that you have been misled on the subject of Mr. Jefferson's letter to me of December 28, 1794, by an unlucky misprint of Jay for Joy, [G. Joy, in London,] the writer of the letter to which Mr. Jefferson refers. This letter has no reference to Mr. Jay, nor to anything that could be within the scope of your conjectures.

My great age, now considerably advanced into its 83a year with the addition of much disease to the usual infirmities incident to it, would alone forbid my engaging in the heavy task of correcting the "statements and inferences" in your "observations on the writings of Mr. Jefferson." I will not, however, suppress the brief remark, that if you had consulted the files of your father, you would have seen in his correspondence with me that he was among the harshest censors of the policy and measures of the Federal Government during the first term of Washington's Administration. You would have seen, also, that he patronized the Gazette of Mr. Frencau, and was anxious to extend the circulation of its strictures on the Administration through another Gazette. He had, indeed, a material agency in prevailing on Freneau, with whom he had been, as was the case with me, a College mate, to comply with Mr. Jefferson's desire of establishing him at the seat of Government.

TO PETER AUGUSTUS JAY.

MONTPELLIER, Augst 14, 1833.

SIR, Your letter of the 8th instant, inclosing one from Major H. Lee, has been duly received. On recurring to the original letter of Dec 28, 1794, from Mr. Jefferson to me, it appears that both of you have been misled on the occasion of it, by an unlucky misprint of Jay for Joy, [G. Joy, in London,] the writer of the letter to me, referred to by Mr. Jefferson. This letter has no reference to your father, or to any subject connected with him or with Major Lee.

I must ask the favor of you to let the inclosed letter pass under cover of your answer to Major Lee.

TO EDWARD EVERETT.

AUGUST 22d, 1833.

DEAR SIR, I received in due time the copy of your address at Worcester on the last 4th of July, and I tender my thanks for it. Its value is enhanced by the recurrence to remote events interesting to the history of our country. It would be well if all our anniversary Orators would follow the example of substituting for part at least of their eloquent repetitions, occurrences now new because they have become old, and which would be acceptable contributions to the general reservoir from which the historian must draw the materials for his pen.

TO JAMES B. LONGACRE.

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AUGUST 27, 1833.

DEAR SIR, I have duly received your letter of the 21 instant. I am aware of the wish you naturally feel for such a biographical sketch of me as will preserve a uniformity in your Gallery, and I am glad that you are sensible of the control I may feel in supplying materials for it.

A friend will attempt a brief chronicle of my career, with,

perhaps, a few remarks and references, and will forward the paper when prepared.

Mrs. M. is much gratified by the impressions you carried from Montpelier, and desires me to say in reply to your letter to her, as I do for myself, that a hospitality so well merited is greatly overpaid by the terms in which you speak of it.

TO W. A. DUER.

SEPTEMBER, 1833.

DEAR SIR-I have received your letter of the 28th ult., inclosing the outlines of your work on the Constitutional Jurisprudence of the United States. The object of the work is certainly important and well chosen, and the plan marked out in the analysis gives full scope for the instructive execution which is anticipated. I am very sensible, sir, of the friendly respect which suggested my name for the distinguished use made of it, and I am not less so of the too partial terms which are applied to it.

As an attention to the design of the work is invited from me as "the Head of the University of Virginia," as well as an individual, it is proper for me to observe, that I am but the presiding member of a Board of Visitors; that the superintend ence of the Institution is in the Faculty of Professors, with a chairman annually appointed by the Visitors; and that the choice of text and class books is left to the Professors respectively. The only exception is in the school of law, in which the subject of Government is included, and on that the Board of Visitors have prescribed as text authorities, "The Federalist," the Resolutions of Virginia in 1798, with the comment on them in '99, and Washington's Farewell Address. The use, therefore, that will be made of any analogous publications will depend on the discretion of the Professor himself. His personal opinions, I believe, favor very strict rules of expounding the Constitution of the U. States.

I shall receive, sir, with thankfulness, the promised volume,