internal improvements on the General Government. It will be recollected that he more than once advanced the same idea in his Presidential messages, and even suggested the commencement of practical steps towards effecting the change. It is understood that he took this view, because he labored under the impression, first, that it would be a necessary concession to some of the States (particularly the western ones), to preserve the Union; and secondly, that internal improvements between States, apart from their utility, and apart from the wishes of the people, would of themselves form indissoluble links of union. It was not then foreseen that private enterprise would soon create these public works. In the light of analogy, probably no doubt can be entertained that Jefferson would have entirely preferred their construction by the latter means, or that had he lived at this day, he would be the first to oppose the constitutional amendment which we have seen him suggesting.

He also wrote to Gallatin :

"Three of our papers have presented us the copy of an act of the Legislature of New York, which, if it has really passed, will carry us back to the times of the darkest bigotry and barbarism, to find a parallel. Its purport is, that all those who shall hereafter join in communion with the religious sect of Shaking Quakers, shall be deemed civilly dead, their marriages dissolved, and all their children and property taken out of their hands. This act being published nakedly in the papers, without the usual signatures, or any history of the circumstances of its passage, I am not without a hope it may have been a mere abortive attempt."

Some interesting particulars in regard to the journals of Lewis and Clarke, in their western expedition, will be found in letters to Mr. Duponceau of Philadelphia; and various details of Jefferson's educational plans for Virginia, in letters to his learned and highly valued friend M. Correa.

His general indoor occupations of the year are thus mournfully described to Mr. Adams:

DEAR SIR:

Forty-three volumes read in one year, and twelve of them quarto! Dear sir, how I envy you! Half a dozen of octavos in that space of time are as much as I am allowed. I can read by candle-light only, and stealing long hours from my rest: nor would that time be indulged to me, could I by that light see to write. From sunrise to one or two o'clock, and often from nner to dark, I am drudging at the writing table. And all this to answer letters in which neither interest nor inclination on my part enters; and often from persons whose names I have never before heard. Yet, writing civilly, it is hard to refuse them civil answers. This is

the burden of my life, a very grievous one indeed, and one which I must get rid of. Delaplaine lately requested me to give him a line on the subject of his book, mean. ing, as I well knew, to publish it. This I constantly refuse; but in this instance yielded, that in saying a word for him, I might say two for myself. I expressed in it freely my sufferings from this source; hoping it would have the effect of an indirect appeal to the discretion of those strangers, and others, who, in the most friendly dispositions, oppress me with their concerns, their pursuits, their projects, inventions and speculations, political, moral, religious, mechanical, mathematical, historical, etc., etc., etc. I hope the appeal will bring me relief, and that I shall be left to exercise and enjoy correspondence with the friends I love, and on subjects which they, or my own inclinations present. In that case your letters shall not be so long on my files unanswered, as sometimes they have been, to my great mortification."

The remark has been perhaps too long deferred, that Mr. Jefferson, after his retirement, kept copies of only a very small portion of his letters; and consequently that neither his published works, nor his manuscripts in the possession of the Government, furnish any just idea of the extent of his correspondence. We shall, hereafter, see that his published writings for a particular year include considerably less than onefiftieth part of the letters which he wrote.

Another fact should have been earlier noticed. While the Congress edition of Jefferson's writings is much fuller than Randolph's, it omits many important letters published in the latter. The tenor of the omitted letters will show at once that they belong to no particular class which it could have been thought desirable by the editor of the Congress edition to exclude; and some of them are more important than those given by him, in many instances. The omission therefore has no obvious explanation.'

The readiest one would be that Professor Washington made his publication exclusively from the manuscripts purchased by the Government from the legatee of Mr. Jefferson's papers, and that the omitted letters had been lost from the collection before it was sold to the Government. But Professor Washington clearly was not contined to the manuscripts, for he gives Jefferson's youthful letters to John Page, which were not included among them, and for which he was indebted to Professor Tucker's life of Jefferson. (Tucker obtained the letters from Page himself, and first published them to the world.) Nor does Professor Washington make this departure from the manuscript: an exceptional one, by mentioning it as such, or by specifying the source from which he derived the letters. Again, careful comparison of the chasms, blanks, asterisks, etc., in the letters which Randolph and Washington both publish-many of which did not exist in the originals-will show a coincidence between editors acting at different times, and under different circumstances, which has but one probable solution. That probable solution is, that Professor Washington was willing to make the same omissions that Randolph had made, and therefore used Randolph's printed copies of the letters, (so far as they went) instead of making written ones from the original manuscripts. This would be the most delicate conrse which could be pursued towards a family editor, and would save a vast amount of unnecessary copying. If this hypothesis is correct, an immense mass of mixed written and printed matter, which required arranging with con

Mr. Jefferson suffered from an attack of illness early in 1818, which if not really dangerous, was supposed sufficiently so to attract much public attention; and his family were overwhelmed with letters from every part of the United States, making inquiries, and expressing the solicitude and sympathy of the writers. He apparently fully recovered his health, but the wear of the machine, the advancing debility of old age, and the predisposition to disease, had doubtless been considerably increased. His correspondence during the year is much less than usual.

A letter to Mr. Wirt congratulates the latter on his accession to the Attorney-Generalship of the United States; and asks his advice as to the proper court in which to prove the will of General Kosciusko, which he had left in the hands of Mr. Jefferson as his executor. The great Pole died at Soleure, in Switzerland, in consequence of a fall from his horse, October 16th, 1817, in the sixty-first year of his age. Mr. Jefferson deeply deplored the loss of "his most intimate, and much beloved friend."

siderable care went into the hands of the printers. Carelessness in any of the parties having the arrangement, or even the handling of this matter, might have led to the accidental and unnoticed loss of some of the printed letters. Whether the loss extended to manuscript papers, we cannot say, having no catalogue of those of Mr. Jefferson, which are in the possession of the Government.

A fact which might escape the notice of cursory readers, and seem to render some of the citations in this biography inaccurate, should here be named. The index of letters in the Congress edition of Mr. Jefferson's writings, is incomplete.

Our citations have been generally made merely by giving dates of the letters, without specifying in which edition they are to be found. A reference to the edition in every instance would have been inconvenient, and would have required much space.

Jefferson and Kosciusko were bosom friends, and kept up a correspondence for a long number of years, and until the death of the latter. After" Warsaw's last Champion"-who has been felicitously described as possessing, in his capacity of a commander, the "integrity of Washington and the activity of Cæsar,"-fell on the fatal field of Macziewice; and after he refused the estates and other presents offered him by the Emperor Paul, he set out for the United States, intending probably to make them his future residence. He reached America in 1797. Like all the other continental foreigners who visited our shores, he became attached to Jefferson; and he earnestly sympathized in Jefferson's political views. He had gallantly served the United States in their Revolutionary struggle, and had been warmly applauded and esteemed by Washington; but this did not prevent him from being insultingly attacked by anti-Republican partisans, particularly by the foul-mouthed Cobbet. It was even thought that he was one of the contemplated objects of the Alien-law. He returned to France in 1798. He had refused to receive back his sword from the Emperor Paul, saying: "I will no longer wear sword, for I have no longer a country;" and accordingly Napoleon never found it practicable to make him a tool, by delusive promises in favor of his country, as he did some other brave and noble Poles. On Kosciusko's death, the women of Poland went into mourning. The Senate solicited his body, and it was carried back at the expense of the Emperor Alexander, and deposited with becoming honors in the tomb of the ancient kings of Poland.

He is understood to have been supported towards the close of his life by the interest. of money received from our Government as a compensation for his military services. He invested this in government funds, and left it under the charge of Jefferson. Some particulars of his will are to be found in letters from Jefferson to Wirt, January 5th, and to M. Jullien, July 23d, 1818.

Death took another of Jefferson's cherished friends, in 1818. Mrs. Adams died near the close of October, and as soon as the sad intelligence reached Monticello, the following letter was written :

To JOHN ADAMS.

MONTICELLO, November 13, 1918.

The public papers, my dear friend, announce the fatal event of which your letter of October the 20th had given me ominous.foreboding. Tried myself in the school of affliction, by the loss of every form of connection which can rive the human heart, I know well, and feel what you have lost, what you have suffered, are suffering, and have yet to endure. The same trials have taught me that for ills so immeasurable, time and silence are the only medicine. I will not, therefore, by useless condolences, open afresh the sluices of your grief, nor, although mingling sincerely my tears with yours, will I say a word more where words are vain, but that it is of some comfort to us both that the term is not very distant, at which we are to deposit in the same cerement, our sorrows and suffering bodies, and to ascend in essence to an ecstatic meeting with the friends we have loved and lost, and whom we shall still love and never lose again. God bless you and support you under your heavy affliction. TH. JEFFERSON.

The publication of Wirt's glowing life of Henry, produced some reclamations in other quarters. Jefferson's assertion, quoted in the work, that "Mr. Henry certainly gave the first impulse to the ball of revolution," drew a letter from Dr. Waterhouse of Massachusetts, questioning the accuracy of this statement. Jefferson replied (March 3d):

"I well recollect to have used some such expression in a letter to him, and am tolerably certain that our own State being the subject under contemplation, I must have used it with respect to that only.

The fact is, that one new idea leads to another, that to a third, and so on through a course of time, until some one, with whom no one of these ideas was original, combines all together, and produces what is justly called a new invention, I suppose it would be as difficult to trace our revolution to its first embryo. We do not know how long it was hatching in the British cabinet before they ventured to make the first of the experiments which were to develop it in the end and to produce complete parliamentary supremacy. Those you mention in Massachusetts as preceding the stamp act, might be the first visible symptoms of that design. The proposition of that act in 1764, was the first here. Your opposition, therefore, preceded ours, as occasion was sooner given there than here, and the truth, I suppose, is, that the opposition in every colony began whenever the encroachment was presented to it. This question of priority is as the inquiry would be who first, of the three hundred Spartans, offered his name to Leonidas?"

Several letters have been quoted in this work, giving

men.

Mr. Jefferson's views on a proper course of education for young The following answer (March 14th, 1818) to inquiries from N. Burwell, contains, it is believed, his fullest expression on a proper course of education for females:

"A plan of female education has never been a subject of systematic contemplation with me. It has occupied my attention so far only as the education of my own daughters occasionally required. Considering that they would be placed in a country situation where little aid could be obtained from abroad, I thought it essential to give them a solid education, which might enable them, when become mothers, to educate their own daughters, and even to direct the course for sons, should their fathers be lost, or incapable, or inattentive. My surviving daughter accordingly, the mother of many daughters as well as sons, has made their education the object of her life, and being a better judge of the practical part than myself, it is with her aid and that of one of her élèves, that I shall subjoin a catalogue of the books for such a course of reading as we have practised.

A great obstacle to good education is the inordinate passion prevalent for novels, and the time lost in that reading which should be instructively employed. When this poison infects the mind, it destroys its tone and revolts it against wholesome reading. Reason and fact, plain and unadorned, are rejected. Nothing can engage attention unless dressed in all the figments of fancy, and nothing so bedecked comes amiss. The result is a bloated imagination, sickly judgment, and disgust towards all the real businesses of life. This mass of trash, however, is not without some distinction; some few modeling their narratives, although fictitious, on the incidents of real life, have been able to make them interesting and useful vehicles of a sound morality. Such, I think, are Marmontel's new moral tales, but not his old ones, which are really immoral. Such are the writings of Miss Edgeworth, and some of those of Madame Genlis. For a like reason, too, much poetry should not be indulged. Some is useful for forming style and taste. Pope, Dryden, Thomson, Shakspeare, and of the French, Molière, Racine, the Corneilles, may be read with pleasure and improvement.

The French language, become that of the general intercourse of nations, and from their extraordinary advances, now the depository of all science, is an indispensable part of education for both sexes. In the subjoined catalogue, therefore, I have placed the books of both languages indifferently, according as the one or the other offers what is best.

The ornaments, too, and the amusements of life, are entitled to their portion of attention. These, for a female, are dancing, drawing, and music. The first is a healthy exercise, elegant, and very attractive for young people. Every affectionate parent would be pleased to see his daughter qualified to participate with her companions and without awkwardness at least, in the circles of festivity, of which she occasionally becomes a part. It is a necessary accomplishment, therefore, although of short use; for the French rule is wise, that no lady dances after marriage. This is founded in solid physical reasons, gestation and nursing leaving little time to a married lady when this exercise can be either safe or innocent. Drawing is thought less of in this country than in Europe. It is an innocent and engaging amusement, often useful, and a qualification not to be neglected in one who is to become a mother and an instructor. Music is invaluable where a person has an

ear.

Where they have not, it should not be attempted. It furnishes a delightful