Sarah N. Randolph

Letters to John Adams.—Number of Letters written and received.—To John Adams.—Breaks his Arm.—Letter to Judge Johnson.—To Lafayette.—The University of Virginia.—Anxiety to have Southern Young Men educated at the South.—Letters on the Subject.—Lafayette's Visit to America.—His Meeting with Jefferson.—Daniel Webster's Visit to Monticello, and Description of Mr. Jefferson.

In the following letter to Mr. Adams we find Mr. Jefferson not complaining of, but fully appreciating the rapidity with which old age and its debilities were advancing on him:

To John Adams.

Monticello, June 1st, 1822.

It is very long, my dear Sir, since I have written to you. My dislocated wrist is now become so stiff that I write slowly and with pain, and therefore write as little as I can. Yet it is due to mutual friendship to ask once in a while how we do. The papers tell us that General Stark is off at the age of 93. Charles Thompson still lives at about the same age—cheerful, slender as a grasshopper, and so much without memory that he scarcely recognizes the members of his household. An intimate friend of his called on him not long since; it was difficult to make him recollect who he was, and, sitting one hour, he told him the same story four times over. Is this life—

"With lab'ring step

To tread our former footsteps?—pace the round

Eternal?—to beat and beat

The beaten track?—to see what we have seen,

To taste the tasted?—o'er our palates to decant

Another vintage?"

It is at most but the life of a cabbage; surely not worth a wish. When all our faculties have left, or are leaving us, one by one—sight, hearing, memory—every avenue of pleasing sensation is closed, and athumy, debility, and malaise left in their places—when friends of our youth are all gone, and a generation is risen around us whom we know not, is death an evil?

"When one by one our ties are torn,

And friend from friend is snatched forlorn,

When man is left alone to mourn,

Oh! then how sweet it is to die!

When trembling limbs refuse their weight,

And films slow gathering dim the sight,

When clouds obscure the mental light,

'Tis nature's kindest boon to die!"

I really think so. I have ever dreaded a doting old age; and my health has been generally so good, and is now so good, that I dread it still. The rapid decline of my strength during the last winter has made me hope sometimes that I see land. During summer I enjoy its temperature; but I shudder at the approach of winter, and wish I could sleep through it with the dormouse, and only wake with him in spring, if ever. They say that Stark could walk about his room. I am told you walk well and firmly. I can only reach my garden, and that with sensible fatigue. I ride, however, daily. But reading is my delight. I should wish never to put pen to paper; and the more because of the treacherous practice some people have of publishing one's letters without leave. Lord Mansfield declared it a breach of trust, and punishable at law. I think it should be a penitentiary felony; yet you will have seen that they have drawn me out into the arena of the newspapers.[65] Although I know it is too late for me to buckle on the armor of youth, yet my indignation would not permit me passively to receive the kick of an ass.

To turn to the news of the day, it seems that the cannibals of Europe are going to eating one another again. A war between Russia and Turkey is like the battle of the kite and snake. Whichever destroys the other leaves a destroyer the less for the world. This pugnacious humor of mankind seems to be the law of his nature, one of the obstacles to too great multiplication provided in the mechanism of the universe. The cocks of the hen-yard kill one another. Bears, bulls, rams, do the same. And the horse, in his wild state, kills all the young males, until, worn down with age and war, some vigorous youth kills him, and takes to himself the harem of females. I hope we shall prove how much happier for man the Quaker policy is, and that the life of the feeder is better than that of the fighter; and it is some consolation that the desolation by these maniacs of one part of the earth is the means of improving it in other parts. Let the latter be our office, and let us milk the cow, while the Russian holds her by the horns, and the Turk by the tail. God bless you, and give you health, strength, and good spirits, and as much of life as you think worth having.

In another letter to Mr. Adams he gives really a pitiable account of the tax on his strength which letter-writing had become. Mr. Adams had suggested that he should publish the letter just quoted, by way of letting the public know how much he suffered from the number of letters he had to answer. Jefferson, in reply, says:

To John Adams.

I do not know how far you may suffer, as I do, under the persecution of letters, of which every mail brings a fresh load. They are letters of inquiry, for the most part, always of good-will, sometimes from friends whom I esteem, but much oftener from persons whose names are unknown to me, but written kindly and civilly, and to which, therefore, civility requires answers. Perhaps the better-known failure of your hand in its function of writing may shield you in greater degree from this distress, and so far qualify the misfortune of its disability. I happened to turn to my letter-list some time ago, and a curiosity was excited to count those received in a single year. It was the year before the last. I found the number to be one thousand two hundred and sixty-seven, many of them requiring answers of elaborate research, and all to be answered with due attention and consideration. Take an average of this number for a week or a day, and I will repeat the question suggested by other considerations in mine of the 1st. Is this life? At best it is but the life of a mill-horse, who sees no end to his circle but in death. To such a life that of a cabbage is paradise. It occurs, then, that my condition of existence, truly stated in that letter, if better known, might check the kind indiscretions which are so heavily depressing the departing hours of life. Such a relief would, to me, be an ineffable blessing.

The reader can form some idea of the extent of this correspondence, which, in his old age, became such a grievous burden to the veteran statesman, from the fact that the letters received by him that were preserved amounted to twenty-six thousand at the time of his death; while the copies left by him, of those which he himself had written, numbered sixteen thousand. These were but a small portion of what he wrote, as he wrote numbers of which he retained no copies.

Mr. Jefferson's estimate of Napoleon's character is found in the following interesting extract from a letter written to Mr. Adams, February 24, 1823:

To John Adams.—Character of Napoleon.

I have just finished reading O'Meara's Bonaparte. It places him in a higher scale of understanding than I had allotted him. I had thought him the greatest of all military captains, but an indifferent statesman, and misled by unworthy passions. The flashes, however, which escaped from him in these conversations with O'Meara prove a mind of great expansion, although not of distinct development and reasoning. He seizes results with rapidity and penetration, but never explains logically the process of reasoning by which he arrives at them.

This book, too, makes us forget his atrocities for a moment, in commiseration of his sufferings. I will not say that the authorities of the world, charged with the care of their country and people, had not a right to confine him for life, as a lion or tiger, on the principle of self-preservation. There was no safety to nations while he was permitted to roam at large. But the putting him to death in cold blood, by lingering tortures of mind, by vexations, insults, and deprivations, was a degree of inhumanity to which the poisonings and assassinations of the school of Borgia and den of Marat never attained. The book proves, also, that nature had denied him the moral sense, the first excellence of well-organized man. If he could seriously and repeatedly affirm that he had raised himself to power without ever having committed a crime, it proved that he wanted totally the sense of right and wrong. If he could consider the millions of human lives which he had destroyed, or caused to be destroyed, the desolations of countries by plunderings, burnings, and famine, the destitutions of lawful rulers of the world without the consent of their constituents, to place his brothers and sisters on their thrones, the cutting up of established societies of men and jumbling them discordantly together again at his caprice, the demolition of the fairest hopes of mankind for the recovery of their rights and amelioration of their condition, and all the numberless train of his other enormities—the man, I say, who could consider all these as no crimes, must have been a moral monster, against whom every hand should have been lifted to slay him.

You are so kind as to inquire after my health. The bone of my arm is well knitted, but my hand and fingers are in a discouraging condition, kept entirely useless by an oedematous swelling of slow amendment. God bless you, and continue your good health of body and mind.

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

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

To Judge Johnson.

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

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

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

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

To the Marquis de Lafayette.—[Extracts.]

Monticello, November 4th, 1823.

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

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

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

THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA.

In alluding to this year of his life, his biographer says, "Mr. Jefferson's absorbing topic throughout 1824 was the University." He had first interested himself in this institution in the year 1817. The plan originally was only to establish a college, to be called the "Central College of Virginia;" but in his hands it was enlarged, and consummated in the erection of the University of Virginia, whose classic dome and columns are now lit up by the morning rays of the same sun which shines on the ruin and desolation of his own once happy home.[66] The architectural plans and form of government and instruction for this institution afforded congenial occupation for his declining years, and made it emphatically the child of his old age. While the buildings were being erected, his visits to them were daily; and from the northeast corner of the terrace at Monticello he frequently watched the workmen engaged on them, through a telescope which is still preserved in the library of the University.

His toil and labors for this institution, and the obstacles which he had to overcome in procuring the necessary funds from the Virginia Legislature, served to distract his thoughts, in a measure, from those pecuniary embarrassments which, though resulting from his protracted services to his country, so imbittered the closing years of his honored life. None appreciated more highly than himself the importance of establishing Southern institutions for the instruction of Southern young men. We find allusions to this subject scattered through the whole of his correspondence during this period of his life.

How entirely he was absorbed in this darling project of his old age, may be seen from the following extract from a letter written by him to Mr. Adams, October 12, 1823:

To John Adams.

I do not write with the ease which your letter of September 18th supposes. Crippled wrists and fingers make writing slow and laborious. But while writing to you, I lose the sense of these things in the recollection of ancient times, when youth and health made happiness out of every thing. I forget for a while the hoary winter of age, when we can think of nothing but how to keep ourselves warm, and how to get rid of our heavy hours until the friendly hand of death shall rid us of all at once. Against this tedium vitÆ, however, I am fortunately mounted on a hobby, which, indeed, I should have better managed some thirty or forty years ago; but whose easy amble is still sufficient to give exercise and amusement to an octogenary rider. This is the establishment of a University, on a scale more comprehensive, and in a country more healthy and central, than our old William and Mary, which these obstacles have long kept in a state of languor and inefficiency.

The following extract from a letter to a friend, inviting him to Monticello, shows what little interest he took in politics:

You must be contented with the plain and sober family and neighborly society, with the assurance that you shall hear no wrangling about the next President, although the excitement on that subject will then be at its acme. Numerous have been the attempts to entangle me in that imbroglio. But at the age of eighty, I seek quiet, and abjure contention. I read but a single newspaper, Ritchie's Enquirer, the best that is published or ever has been published in America.

In one of his letters to J. C. Cabell, written about the appointment of Professors for the University, we find the following passage, which sounds strangely now in an age when nepotism is so rife:

In the course of the trusts I have exercised through life with powers of appointment, I can say with truth, and with unspeakable comfort, that I never did appoint a relation to office, and that merely because I never saw the case in which some one did not offer, or occur, better qualified; and I have the most unlimited confidence that in the appointment of Professors to our nursling institution every individual of my associates will look with a single eye to the sublimation of its character, and adopt, as our sacred motto, "Detur digniori!" In this way it will honor us, and bless our country.

In August, 1824, the people of the United States were, as Jefferson wrote to a friend, thrown into a "delirium" of joy by the arrival in New York of Lafayette. He had left their shores forty years before, loaded with all the honors that an admiring and victorious people could heap upon a generous and gallant young defender. Filled with all the enthusiasm inspired by youth, genius, and patriotism, he had returned to his beloved France with a future full of promise and hope; and now, after having passed through the storms of two Revolutions, after having seen his fairest hopes, both for himself and his country, perish, he came back to America, an impoverished and decrepit old man. His misfortunes, in the eyes of the Americans, gave him greater claims on their love and sympathy, and his visit was really triumphal. Jefferson, in describing his tour through the country, wrote: "He is making a triumphant progress through the States, from town to town, with acclamations of welcome, such as no crowned head ever received."

In writing to Lafayette to hasten his visit to Monticello, where he was impatiently expected, Jefferson says:

To Lafayette.

What a history have we to run over, from the evening that yourself, Mousnier, Bernan, and other patriots settled, in my house in Paris, the outlines of the constitution you wished. And to trace it through all the disastrous chapters of Robespierre, Barras, Bonaparte, and the Bourbons! These things, however, are for our meeting. You mention the return of Miss Wright to America, accompanied by her sister; but do not say what her stay is to be, nor what her course. Should it lead her to a visit of our University, which in its architecture only is as yet an object, herself and her companion will nowhere find a welcome more hearty than with Mrs. Randolph, and all the inhabitants of Monticello. This AthenÆum of our country, in embryo, is as yet but promise; and not in a state to recall the recollections of Athens. But every thing has its beginning, its growth, and end; and who knows with what future delicious morsels of philosophy, and by what future Miss Wright raked from its ruins, the world may, some day, be gratified and instructed?... But all these things À revoir; in the mean time we are impatient that your ceremonies at York should be over, and give you to the embraces of friendship.

To Monticello, where "the embraces of friendship" awaited him, Lafayette accordingly went, and the following description of the touching and beautiful scene witnessed by those who saw the meeting between these two old friends and veteran patriots has been furnished me by his grandson, Mr. Jefferson Randolph, who was present on that memorable occasion:

Lafayette and Jefferson in 1824.

The lawn on the eastern side of the house at Monticello contains not quite an acre. On this spot was the meeting of Jefferson and Lafayette, on the latter's visit to the United States. The barouche containing Lafayette stopped at the edge of this lawn. His escort—one hundred and twenty mounted men—formed on one side in a semicircle extending from the carriage to the house. A crowd of about two hundred men, who were drawn together by curiosity to witness the meeting of these two venerable men, formed themselves in a semicircle on the opposite side. As Lafayette descended from the carriage, Jefferson descended the steps of the portico. The scene which followed was touching. Jefferson was feeble and tottering with age—Lafayette permanently lamed and broken in health by his long confinement in the dungeon of Olmutz. As they approached each other, their uncertain gait quickened itself into a shuffling run, and exclaiming, "Ah, Jefferson!" "Ah, Lafayette!" they burst into tears as they fell into each other's arms. Among the four hundred men witnessing the scene there was not a dry eye—no sound save an occasional suppressed sob. The two old men entered the house as the crowd dispersed in profound silence.

At a dinner given to Lafayette in Charlottesville, besides the "Nation's Guest," there were present Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe. To the toast: "Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence—alike identified with the Cause of Liberty," Jefferson responded in a few written remarks, which were read by Mr. Southall. We find in the following extract from them a graceful and heartfelt tribute to his well-loved friend:

I joy, my friends, in your joy, inspired by the visit of this our ancient and distinguished leader and benefactor. His deeds in the war of independence you have heard and read. They are known to you, and embalmed in your memories and in the pages of faithful history. His deeds in the peace which followed that war, are perhaps not known to you; but I can attest them. When I was stationed in his country, for the purpose of cementing its friendship with ours and of advancing our mutual interests, this friend of both was my most powerful auxiliary and advocate. He made our cause his own, as in truth it was that of his native country also. His influence and connections there were great. All doors of all departments were open to him at all times; to me only formally and at appointed times. In truth I only held the nail, he drove it. Honor him, then, as your benefactor in peace as well as in war.

Towards the close of the year 1824 Daniel Webster visited Monticello, and spent a day or two there. He has left us an account of this visit, containing a minute description of Jefferson's personal appearance, style of dress, and habits. After giving extracts from this account, Mr. Randall, in his Life of Jefferson, says: "These descriptions appearing to us to lack some of those gradations and qualifications in expression which are essential to convey accurate impressions, we sought an opinion on them from one as familiar with Mr. Jefferson, with his views and modes of expression, as any person ever was, and received the following reply:

——, 1857.

My dear Mr. Randall—.... First, on the subject of Mr. Jefferson's personal appearance. Mr. Webster's description of it did not please me, because, though I will not stop to quarrel with any of the details, the general impression it was calculated to produce seemed to me an unfavorable one; that is, a person who had never seen my grandfather, would, from Mr. Webster's description, have thought him rather an ill-looking man, which he certainly never was....

It would be, however, very difficult for me to give an accurate description of the appearance of one whom I so tenderly loved and deeply venerated. His person and countenance were to me associated with so many of my best affections, so much of my highest reverence, that I could not expect other persons to see them as I did. One thing I will say—that never in my life did I see his countenance distorted by a single bad passion or unworthy feeling. I have seen the expression of suffering, bodily and mental, of grief, pain, sadness, just indignation, disappointment, disagreeable surprise, and displeasure, but never of anger, impatience, peevishness, discontent, to say nothing of worse or more ignoble emotions. To the contrary, it was impossible to look on his face without being struck with its benevolent, intelligent, cheerful, and placid expression. It was at once intellectual, good, kind, and pleasant, while his tall, spare figure spoke of health, activity, and that helpfulness, that power and will, "never to trouble another for what he could do himself," which marked his character.

His dress was simple, and adapted to his ideas of neatness and comfort. He paid little attention to fashion, wearing whatever he liked best, and sometimes blending the fashions of several different periods. He wore long waistcoats, when the mode was for very short; white cambric stocks fastened behind with a buckle, when cravats were universal. He adopted the pantaloon very late in life, because he found it more comfortable and convenient, and cut off his queue for the same reason. He made no change except from motives of the same kind, and did nothing to be in conformity with the fashion of the day. He considered such independence as the privilege of his age....

In like manner, I never heard him speak of Wirt's Life of Patrick Henry with the amount of severity recorded by Mr. Webster. My impression is that here too, Mr. Webster, from a very natural impulse, and without the least intention of misrepresentation, has put down only those parts of Mr. Jefferson's remarks which accorded with his own views, and left out all the extenuations—the "circonstantes attendantes," as the French say. This, of course, would lead to an erroneous impression. Of Mr. Wirt's book my grandfather did not think very highly; but the unkind remark, so far as Mr. Wirt was personally concerned, unaccompanied by any thing to soften its severity, is, to say the least, very little like Mr. Jefferson.

ELLEN W. COOLIDGE.

Of Jefferson's opinion of Henry, Mr. Randall goes on to say:

His whole correspondence, and his Memoir written at the age of seventy-seven, exhibit his unbounded admiration of Henry in certain particulars, and his dislike or severe animadversion in none. Henry and he came to differ very widely in politics, and the former literally died leading a gallant political sortie against the conquering Republicans. On one occasion, at least, his keen native humor was directed personally against Jefferson. With his inimitable look and tone, he with great effect declared that he did not approve of gentlemen's "abjuring their native victuals."[67] This gave great diversion to Jefferson. He loved to talk about Henry, to narrate anecdotes of their early intimacy; to paint his taste for unrestrained nature in every thing; to describe his bonhomie, his humor, his unquestionable integrity, mixed with a certain waywardness and freakishness; to give illustrations of his shrewdness, and of his overwhelming power as an orator.

Mr. Randall's indefatigable industry in ferretting out every account and record of Jefferson has laid before the public Dr. Dunglison's interesting and valuable memoranda concerning his intercourse with Mr. Jefferson and his last illness and death. I make the following extracts:

Dr. Dunglison's Memoranda.

Soon afterwards [the arrival at Charlottesville] the venerable ex-President presented himself, and welcomed us[68] with that dignity and kindness for which he was celebrated. He was then eighty-two years old, with his intellectual powers unshaken by age, and the physical man so active that he rode to and from Monticello, and took exercise on foot with all the activity of one twenty or thirty years younger. He sympathized with us on the discomforts of our long voyage, and on the disagreeable journey we must have passed over the Virginia roads; and depicted to us the great distress he had felt lest we had been lost at sea—for he had almost given us up, when my letter arrived with the joyful intelligence that we were safe....

The houses [the professors' houses, or "pavilions" of the University] were much better furnished than we had expected to find them, and would have been far more commodious had Mr. Jefferson consulted his excellent and competent daughter, Mrs. Randolph, in regard to the interior arrangements, instead of planning the architectural exterior first, and leaving the interior to shift for itself. Closets would have interfered with the symmetry of the rooms or passages, and hence there were none in most of the houses; and of the only one which was furnished with a closet, it was told as an anecdote of Mr. Jefferson, that, not suspecting it, according to his general arrangements, he opened the door and walked into it in his way out of the pavilion....

Mr. Jefferson was considered to have but little faith in physic; and has often told me that he would rather trust to the unaided, or, rather, uninterfered with, efforts of nature than to physicians in general. "It is not," he was wont to observe, "to physic that I object so much, as to physicians." Occasionally, too, he would speak jocularly, especially to the unprofessional, of medical practice, and on one occasion gave offense, when, most assuredly, if the same thing had been said to me, no offense would have been taken. In the presence of Dr. Everett, afterwards Private Secretary to Mr. Monroe, he remarked that whenever he saw three physicians together, he looked up to discover whether there was not a turkey-buzzard in the neighborhood. The annoyance of the doctor, I am told, was manifest. To me, when it was recounted, it seemed a harmless jest. But whatever may have been Mr. Jefferson's notions of physic and physicians, it is but justice to say that he was one of the most attentive and respectful of patients. He bore suffering inflicted upon him for remedial purposes with fortitude; and in my visits, showed me, by memoranda, the regularity with which he had taken the prescribed remedies at the appointed times....

In the summer of 1825, the monotonous life of the college was broken in upon by the arrival of General Lafayette, to take leave of his distinguished friend, Mr. Jefferson, preparatory to his return to France. A dinner was given to him in the rotunda by the professors and students, at which Mr. Madison and Mr. Monroe were present, but Mr. Jefferson's indisposition prevented him from attending. "The meeting at Monticello," says M. Levasseur, the Secretary to General Lafayette during his journey, in his "Lafayette in America in 1824 and 1825," vol. ii., p. 245, "of three men who, by their successive elevation to the supreme magistracy of the state, had given to their country twenty-four years of prosperity and glory, and who still offered it the example of private virtues, was a sufficiently strong inducement to make us wish to stay there a longer time; but indispensable duties recalled General Lafayette to Washington, and he was obliged to take leave of his friends. I shall not attempt to depict the sadness which prevailed at this cruel separation, which had none of the alleviation which is usually felt by youth; for in this instance the individuals who bade farewell had all passed through a long career, and the immensity of the ocean would still add to the difficulties of a reunion."

M. Levasseur has evidently confounded this banquet with that given by the inhabitants of Charlottesville, the year preceding, during the first visit of Lafayette to Mr. Jefferson. At that period there were neither professors nor students, as the institution was not opened until six months afterwards. "Every thing," says M. Levasseur (vol. i., p. 220), "had been prepared at Charlottesville, by the citizens and students, to give a worthy reception to Lafayette. The sight of the nation's guest seated at the patriotic banquet, between Jefferson and Madison, excited in those present an enthusiasm which expressed itself in enlivening sallies of wit and humor. Mr. Madison, who had arrived that day at Charlottesville to attend this meeting, was especially remarkable for the originality of his expressions and the delicacy of his allusions. Before leaving the table he gave a toast—'To Liberty—with Virtue for her Guest, and Gratitude for the Feast,' which was received with rapturous applause."

The same enthusiasm prevailed at the dinner given in the rotunda. One of the toasts proposed by an officer of the institution, I believe, was an example of forcing a metaphor to the full extent of its capability—"The Apple of our Heart's Eye—Lafayette."