farms. In another particular it was changed to his deep distress. Retirement had been made happy by the opportunity which it seemed to offer for reading, and at first he read constantly. But more and more the pressure of correspondence lessened the time available for anything else. He liked to write letters and to receive them, as he "lost the sense of crippled wrists and fingers" while writing, but the burden became almost unendurable. He wrote Adams in 1817 that from dinner to dark he was "drudging at the writing table.” “All this," he continued, "to answer letters into 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."

He consented to write a few lines of introduction to one of Delaplaine's books that he might make there a public appeal for relief from this burden, but it does not appear to have been successful, for he wrote Adams in 1822 that he had received 1267 letters the previous year and had answered all, though many of them had required long replies and some, extensive investigation. "Is this life?" he asked. "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." Since he had earlier described the life of a cabbage as "surely not worth a wish" he had evidently come close to the irreducible minimum in enjoyment of existence. At the time of his death he had twenty-six

thousand letters filed and had copies of sixteen thousand replies. Part of these had been made with a letterpress, which by the way he is credited with inventing, and part had been written on a cleverly devised duplicating machine which he called a "polygraph."

Among the letters of this period are some of the most interesting of his writings. They reveal the very best that was in him which is enough to indicate their quality. In addition, they cover a wide range and many of them are as interesting to-day as when they were written. His style was easy, but he wrote with precision and conciseness, and at times with an almost poetic felicity of diction. His constitutional calmness, circumspection, vigor of understanding and creative fancy are all revealed in them as are his acquired philosophical view of men and events and the richness of his intellectual resources. He and Adams in their famous correspondence were excellent foils for each other.

In spite of the time given to writing, the amount of reading he accomplished was enormous. Classical and standard authors attracted him. He read Homer, Virgil, Livy, Tacitus, Horace, Cicero, Dante, Corneille, Cervantes, Shakspere and Milton. In the last year of his life he read Eschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. In 1814, while on a protracted visit to Poplar Forest, where he went at intervals partly to inspect the plantation but chiefly to escape from visitors, he read Plato's "Republic" and expressed himself as disgusted with "the whimsies, the puerilities and unintelligible jargon of the work."

He did not, however, confine his attention to classical authors, he was too completely a modernist for that. He read regularly the "Edinburgh Review," to which he subscribed, and his letters mention reading Paganel's work on the French Revolution, Marshall's Washington, which he termed "a party diatribe," Destutt de Tracy's ideology, Botta's American Revolution, Eaton's life of Jackson, Flourens' experiments on the functions of the nervous system in vertebrate animals, Woodward's system of universal science and scores of other titles. He read also Greek and Latin readers and a Cherokee grammar and he was interested in Pestalozzi's theories of education. He had been fond of poetry but found his taste for it gone, as it had pretty much for mathematics. Of history he read widely, denouncing Hume as having "done more toward the suppression of the liberties of man than all the million of men in arms of Bonaparte and the millions of human lives with the sacrifice of which he will stand loaded before the judgment seat of his maker."

Retirement with Jefferson, as it turned out, meant merely withdrawal from active public life, not from the world. He had looked to association chiefly with the local community, which he described as consisting "of plain, honest and rational neighbors, some of them well-informed, and men of reading, all superintending their farms, hospitable and friendly," and he saw much of them, becoming "their friendly adviser, lawyer, and even gardener," but they were only a small part of his visitors. Never before or since did the world so in

sistently beat a pathway to any man's door. Friends came, such as Madison, Monroe, Wirt, Nelson, Lafayette, Correa da Serra and Cabell; distinguished national figures such as Webster and Clay, but there came also many others. Monticello was "overrun with pilgrims from the illustrious to the impertinent." His granddaughter well described it. "They came of all nations, at all times, and paid longer or shorter visits. I have known a New England judge bring a letter of introduction to my grandfather, and stay three weeks. . . . We had persons from abroad, from all the states of the Union, from every part of the State-men, women, and children. In short, almost every day, for at least eight months of the year, brought its contingent guests. People of wealth, fashion, men in office, professional men, military and civil, lawyers, doctors, Protestant clergymen, Catholic priests, members of Congress, foreign ministers, missionaries, Indian agents, tourists, travelers, artists, strangers, friends. Some came from affection and respect, some from curiosity, some to give or receive advice or instruction, some from idleness, some because others set the example, and very varied, amusing, and agreeable was the society afforded by this influx of guests." Sometimes there were as many as fifty guests at one time, the great majority unexpected and uninvited, and many unknown. In the stables were their horses and in the kitchen their servants, and altogether they not only robbed him of time and rest and destroyed his privacy, but they literally ate him out of house and home.

Age brought to Jefferson little loss of mental vigor or spirit. In 1822 he was accused anonymously in the press of personal dishonesty in the settlement of accounts with the United States. He replied resentfully and, of course, conclusively; and reporting the matter to Adams, said, "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." Not often, however, did such matters touch him or did the changes taking place in the world tempt him from retirement. "To me," he wrote, "they have been like the howlings of the winter storm over the battlements while warm in my bed."

And yet he met old age with a youthful spirit. He had retired not to die but to live more abundantly, and in that frame of mind he went on to the end. He never varied in the attitude which he expressed to Adams when asked if he would be willing to live over his seventy-three years. "To which I say, yea. I think with you that it is a good world that it is a good world on the whole; that it has been founded on a principle of benevolence and more pleasure than pain dealt out .. My temperament is sanguine. I steer my bark with Hope in the head, leaving Fear astern.”

to us.

In another respect was his old age youthful. He had none of the inflexibility of mind which age so often imposes. He was eager to learn and ready to change his views when they were proved wrong or when conditions altered. He became an advoHe became an advocate of the development of industry, or "placing the manufacturer by the side of the agriculturist," or "the consumer by the side of the pro

ducer," as he phrased it. Always he was seeking the truth as he had sought liberty. sought liberty. Truth alone could make men free. Just before his death he voiced his faith. "There is not a truth existing which I fear, or would wish unknown to the whole world."

22

The greatest service of his later years-in his mind one of three things for which he believed himself worthy of remembrance-was, of course, the founding of the University of Virginia. Always interested in popular education he began in 1776 to urge it enthusiastically. Later the establishment of a state university seemed to him a necessary part of the plan. He converted Virginia to the idea,-no light taskhe planned its organization and its program on different lines from those prevailing in the United States, he designed and had built under his own eye the beautiful buildings that were to house the institution and he gathered together a faculty. He did all this in spite of the bitter opposition of the clergy and of political and personal enemies, and in 1825 he had the joy of seeing students in attendance, bringing "hither their genius to be kindled at our fire," as he phrased it. This last year, in spite of his distress over financial troubles, rounded out well a full and rich life. His university was in operation, he had completed a half century since he penned an immortal document in the history of human freedom and he had lived to see Jeffersonianism become Americanism. Fortunately for his peace of mind, he could not see what a century would do for his doctrines or for his country, and he was ready to utter his nunc dimittis.

From the time he reached middle age Jefferson had dreaded living too long, and when in 1803, at the age of sixty, he thought he had discovered the beginnings of a slow but fatal disease, he was not at all unhappy over it. But he recovered and for the rest of his life seems not to have troubled himself unduly with fears of senility, although he was conscious of the changes age was making in him and constantly alluded to them. In 1814 he wrote Adams, "But our machines have now been running seventy or eighty years, and we must expect that, worn as they are, here a pivot, there a wheel, now a pinion, next a spring, will be giving away; and however we may tinker them up for a while, all will at length surcease motion."

Time, on the whole, treated him kindly. His hair became somewhat grizzled, but his sight was good and every tooth was sound. His digestion was unimpaired. In his later years, he could not walk any great distance, but he rode every day, often for many miles, without fatigue. He had dislocated his wrist in Paris, and it now became stiff and at times painful. In 1823 he fell down the steps of one of the terraces at Monticello and broke the other arm. The bone knit but it was never entirely comfortable again. The fact that he was ambidextrous was a great service to him now. health had begun to fail a few years before this, and from then on he went downhill, slowly, it is true, but steadily. Soon after the new year in 1826, he grew worse, but did not call in a doctor until the end of June, when he was beyond help. As he phrased it, "the machine" was "at

His

last worn out." He was perfectly aware of his condition and entirely contented and unafraid. He was weak but he was serene and cheerful as usual, and retained his decisive quality to the end. On the day he summoned a physician, he wrote declining, on the plea of illness, to attend the jubilee celebration of the Fourth of July at Washington, and expressing the hope and belief that the choice made fifty years before might arouse men everywhere to "burst the chains, under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government.” Thereafter his mind was full of the day and its memories, and in his dreams he reverted to the Revolution. He hoped to see the Fourth and when he was told that it had come, he murmured "Nunc dimittis, Domine."

Ten years before he had written Adams: "The simultaneous movements in our correspondence have been remarkable on several occasions. It would seem as if the state of the air, or the state of the times, or some other unknown cause, produced a sympathetic effect on our mutual recollections." Once more, seemingly, their spirits were attuned to each other. Jefferson went ahead, choosing, as it were, the hour at which the Declaration had first been read to Congress. But who does not wish to think that somewhere close by he lingered, waiting for his old comrade, that with renewed youth, in fullness of powers, with bold and eager confidence, they might once more together dare a great adventure?