he was born, and the adjacent grounds of Monticello. His early opposition to the British colonial policy is well known. The details belong to political rather than literary history. Ilis views on the position of the country were expressed in a draft of instructions which he prepared for delegates to a general Congress, to be sent ir m the convention at Williamsburg, in 1774. The paper was read by the members, and not brongit up to be adopted, but it was published in a jam phlet form with the title 4 Summary View of the Rights of British America. Edmund Burke, when it reached London, interpolated some passages in it, in which form it passed through several editions.* In 1775, Jefferson succceded Peyton Randolph in his seat in Congress at Philadelfia. He was thirty-two years of age, and the youret man but one in that body. He was immediately engaged in its affairs, his legal and literary alities being called for to assist the committee to prepare a declaration of the causes of taking up arms. The draft which Jefferson prepared was too ardent for his colleague, Dickinson, and the latter substituted a statement in milder form. Whey the consideration of the question of Inle penence arose, Jefferson was appointed chairman of the Committee of Adams, Franklin, Sherman, and Livingston, to prepare a Declaration. The committee," he says, in his Antobiography, “desired me to do it: it was accordingly done." A few verbal corrections appear in the fac-simile of the original draft in the hand-writing of Franklin and Adains. The paper was reported on Friday, 28th June, 1776, laid on the table, and on Monday referred to a committee of the whole, discussed for the three following days, abrized; of several superfluous phrases and some passages bearing severely upon Great Britain and affecting the question of slavery. On the evening of the meteorable Fourth it was adopted in its present fona. A discussion has arisen with respect to the authorship of several striking phrases this document, alleged to have been anticipa I by the Mecklenburg North Carolina Resolutions of May 20, 1775. In the last mentioned paper the following language occurs: "That we, the citizens of Mecklenburg county, do hereby dissolve the po litical bands which have connected us with the mother country, and hereby absolve ourselves from all allegiance to the British crown, and abjure all political connexion, contract, or association with that nation.***That we do hereby declare ourselves a free and independent people; are, and of right ought to be, a sovereign and self-governing association, under the control of no person, other than that of our God, and the general government of Congress; to the maintenance of which independence, we solemnly pledge to each other, our mutual co-operation, our lives, our fortunes, and our most sacred honor." The lines which we have marked in italics suggest placiarism from one quarter or the other. The con Autobiography, Works, 1. 7. Ed. 1580, "Mr. Jefferson came into Congres in June, 1773, and brought with him a reputation for literature, science, and a happy talent of composition. Writings of his were handed about, remarkable for the peenllar felicity of expressing"John Adams's Letter to Timothy Pickering, Aug. 6, 1:22. parison between the two was brought up in a letter from John Adams to Mr. Jefferson, dated June, 1819. Jefferson in reply, at the age of seventy-six, when he may have forgotten the contemporary report of the affair, doubted the authenticity of the paper. The fact of the declaration at Mecklenburg and the words of the Resolutions were maintained afterwards by a report of the legislature of North Carolina, which investigated the evidence. Professor Tucker, in his Life of Jefferson, published in 1837, admits the agreement and the plagiarism lying between the two, and does not question the fact that a declaration was made at Mecklenburg, but argues that the Jeffersonian phrases were interpolated subsequently from the Declaration of Congress.* But whatever coincidences of expression may be noticed by the curious students of such matters, in the language of Webster on the soleinn occasion of the funeral eulogy of Adams and Jefferson, "as a composition, the Declaration is Mr. Jefferson's. It is the production of his mind, and the high honor of it belongs to him, clearly and absolutely. To say that he performed his work well would be doing him injustice. To say that he did excellently well, admirably well, would be inadequate and halting praise. Let us rather say, that he so discharged the duty assigned him, that all Americans may well rejoice that the work of drawing the title-deed of their liberties devolved upon him."† Leaving Congress in September after the Declaration, Jefferson's faculties were employed in legal reforms in the legislature of his state, of which he became Governor in 1779, retaining the office till 1781, when he resigned it, thinking a man of military education was required for the conduct of affairs. He was offered several foreign appointments, to negotiate treaties in Europe, and finally embarked from Boston in 1784, to join Franklin and Adams in Paris for this purpose. When Adams was appointed minister to London, and Franklin returned home in 1785, Jefferson was left minister in Paris. Ile remained in that situation, travelling in France and visiting Holland and Piedmont till 1789, when he returned to America. On his arrival in Virginia he was met by the appointment from Washington of Secretary of State, which office he entered upon in New York, retaining it till the close of 1793. He then passed three years in retirement, from which the Vice-Presidency withdrew him, succeeded at the end of the term in 1801 by his election to the Presidency. After eight years, he retired to Monticello for the remainder of his career, and lived the life of a planter and student. His interest in education led him to be appointed chairman of the commission which formed the University at Charlottesville, in his vicinity, of which he became the rector. In 1815, his pecuniary circumstances having become straitened, he sold his library of about seven thousand volumes to Congress, for which he received twenty-three thousand dollars. It was arranged by him on the Baconian plan of a division under Memory, Reason or Judgment, and the Imagination. The departments showed a liberal range of study on science and literature, including an allowance of the Fine Arts. In the fire in the Library Room in 1852, most of these books were destroyed. Jefferson's last days were passed in the rural enjoyments of Monticello, and with unimpaired mental pleasures. He died on the fourth of July, 1826, on the completion of fifty years from the date of his signing the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson's popular literary reputation will mainly rest on the stirring sentences of this Declaration. There is abundant material in the nine octavo volumes of his writings,* but little of it is coined for current circulation. The autobiography, written in extreme age, has nothing of the repose and relish of Franklin's; the reports, messages, and other political writings may be sometimes referred to, but will seldom be perused; while the Correspondence, when perfectly arranged and annotated, will remain the best and most agreeable picture of the man. The Notes on the State of Virginia were written at the suggestion of M. Marbois of the French legation in Philadelphia, who in 1781, in accordance with the wishes of his government for information, proposed to Jefferson a set of queries. As the latter had always been in the habit of jotting down memoranda of statistical and useful matters relating to the country, he took this opportunity of arranging them in order. Copies were in request among the author's friends, and for their satisfaction the work was privately printed, an edition of two hundred copies in Paris, in 1781, and distributed abroad and in America. One of the European copies, on the death of its owner, was obtained by a bookseller, who had it bunglingly translated by the Abbé Morellet into French, the author hearing of it in time to make some corrections and changes, when it appeared-Observations sur la Virginie, par M. J***, traduites de Anglois, 8vo. Paris, 1786. The next year, Jefferson gave the original to an English publisher.† The correspondence of Jefferson, as published by his grandson, contains the finest specimens of his literary powers. Many of the letters are written with a care that smells of the lamp. There is scarcely one of them which does not contain something suggestive or useful. During his residence in France he was very industrious as a correspondent, and his letters on the political affairs of the country, during the early period of the Revolution, addressed to Washington, Jay, and others, are valuable for their observation and sagacity. Madison is his chosen correspon dent on American political ideas. He addresses John Adams on state affairs in France, and when they both become veterans, in retireinent from public life, Braintree and Monticello exchange notes on topics of ethics and religion. He inte rests himself while in Europe, in all the liberal pursuits of his friends. He writes to Rittenhouse on points raised in the Notes on Virginia; to Francis Hopkinson concerning his musical improvements and inventions, and asks (in_1786) "what is become of the lunarium for the king?" He is solicitous for Houdon the sculptor, Tom Paine's iron bridge and its mathematical principles, the ethnological promises of Ledyard's travels, his friend Buffon's museum, that it be furnished with American specimens, and cheerfully fills the duties of a Paris commissioner in supplying the libraries of his friends at home with foreign books. His letters to his nephew Peter Carr show the warmth of his family attachments, and his zealous study of the nature of a practical education for mind and body; and the politician and philosopher can gaily unbend from graver studies to compliment his lady correspondents with his refinements of expression. To Mrs. Cosway he addresses the fine dialogue between Head and Heart on American nature, and discourses very prettily to Mrs. Bingham on the fopperies of Parisian life. In 1787, on the 28th February, suffering from a dislocated wrist, Jefferson set out, by advice of his physician, on a tour to the mineral waters of Aix. By the time he returned to Paris, in June, he had passed through the heart of the country, and traversed the boundaries of France on the south and west, advancing in Italy along the Mediter ranean as far as Genoa. He was greatly impressed with the architecture of that noble relic of antiquity, the Maison Quarrie, at Nismes. He writes to Madame la Comtesse de Tesse, on the beauties of a statue; to La Fayette, calling upon him to make the same journey,—“ and to do it most effectually, you must be absolutely incognito, you must ferret the people out of their hovels as I have done, look into their kettles, eat their bread, loll on their beds, under pretence of resting yourself, but in fact to find if they are soft. You will feel a sublime pleasure in the course of this investigation, and a sublimer one hereafter, when you shall be able to apply your knowledge to the softening of their beds, or the throwing a morsel of meat into their kettle of vegetables." His memoranda apply to the wines of Burgundy, the agriculture and labor of the Rhone districts, the mode of living of the peasantry, the agricultural improvements;—the itinerary of an useful, intelligent, and active-minded tourist. Approaching the close of life, in 1816, he writes to John Adams,"You ask, if I would agree to live my seventy, or rather seventy-three years over again? To which I say, yea. I think with you, that it is a good world on the whole; that it has been framed on a principle of benevolence, and more pleasure than pain dealt out to us. ** My temperament is sanguine. I steer my bark with Hope in the head, leaving Fear astern. My hopes, indeed, sometimes fail; but not oftener than the forebodings of the gloomy." This was the cheerful close of a life of activity. His intellectual habits were those which wear well; keen, subtle, sagacious in thinking and acting as a politician, he was neat in composition, skilful in statement, curious and philosophical in speculation. Quick, active, versatile, he exercised the ingenuity of a man of talent, rather than the unconscious instinct of a man of genius. Ilis mind was clear on objects which admitted of being presented in a transparent light and profound on material issues. Politics he made an art, and was sensitive to every fibre of the web of political intrigue. He was not an orator or a great debater, but a good talker, an artful writer, master of that cunning instrument the pen-and an adept in personal management. In politics and philosophy what force he employed was rectilinear and progressive. His writings lack weight for the man of deep thought or feeling. They are agreeable studies for the philosophical amateur, and profitable ones for the politician who follows out in action his far-sighted speculations. . DIALOGUE BETWEEN HEAD AND HEART. In a Letter to Mrs. Cosway, Paris, Oct. 12, 1786. My Dear Madam,-Having performed the last sad office of handing you into your carriage, at the pavillon de St. Dinis, and seen the wheels get actually into motion, I turned on my heel and walked, more dead than alive, to the opposite door, where my own was awaiting me. Mr. Danquerville was missing. He was sought for, found, and dragged down stairs. We were crammed into the carriage, like recruits for the Bastille, 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 broke, with a “ Je suis vraiment affligé du depart de ces bons gens." This was a sig. nal for mutual confession of distress. We 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 aunounced the rue St. Denis, and that we were opposite Mr. Danquerville'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. These are the eternal consequences of your warmth and precipitation. This is one of the scrapes into which you are ever leading us. You confess your follies, indeed; but still you hug and cherish them; and no reformation can be hoped where there is no repentance. Heart. Oh, my friend! this is no moment to upbraid my foibles. I am rent into fragments by the force of my grief! If you have any balm, pour it into my wounds; if none, do not harrow them by new torments. Spare me in this awful moment! At any other, I will attend with patience to your admonitions Head. On the contrary, I never found that the moment of triumph, with you, was the moment of attention to my admonitions. While suffering under your follies, you may perhaps be made sensible of them; but, the paroxysm over, you fancy it can never return. Harh, therefore, as the medicine may be, it is my office to administer it. You will be pleased to remember, that when our friend Trumbull used to be telling us of the merits and talents of these good people, I never ceased whispering to you that we had no occasion for new acquaintances; that the greater their merit and talents, the more dangerous their friendship to our tranquillity, because the regret at parting would be greater. Heart. Accordingly, Sir, this acquaintance was not the consequence of my doings. It was one of your projects which threw us in the way of it. It was you, remember, and not I, who desired the meeting at Legrand and Motinos I never trouble myself with domes nor arches. The Halle au bles might have rotted down, before I should have gone to see it. But you, forsooth, who are eternally getting us to sleep with your diagrams and crotchets, must go and examine this wonderful piece of architecture; and when you had seen it, oh! it was the most superb thing on earth! What you had seen there was worth all you had yet seen in Paris! I thought so too. But I meant it of the lady and gentleman to whom we had been presented; and not of a parcel of sticks and chips put together in pens. You then, Sir, and not I, have been the cause of the present distress. 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. My visit to Legrand and Motinos had public utility for its object. A market is to be built in Richmond. What a commodious plan is that of Legrand and Motinos; especially, if we put on it the noble dome of the Halle au bles. If such a bridge as they showed us can be thrown across the Schuylkill, at Philadelphia, the floating bridges taken up, and the navigation of that river opened, what a copious resource will be added, of wood and provisions, to warm and feed the poor of that city? 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 messengers were to be despatched 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, despatches 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 from 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 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 Port de Reuilly, 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 Desert. How grand the idea excited by the romains of such a column. The spiral staircase, too, was beautiful. Every moment was filled with something agreeable. The wheels of time moved on with a rapidity of which those of our carriage gave but a faint idea. And yet, in the evening, when one took a retrospect of the day, what a mass of happiness had we travelled over! Retrace all those scenes to me, my good companion, and I will forgive the unkindness with which you were chiding me. The day we went to St. Germains was a little too warm, I think; was it not! Head. Thou art the most incorrigible of all the beings that ever sinned! I reminded you of the follies of the first day, intending to deduce from thence some useful lessons for you; but instead of listening to them, you kindle at the recollection, you retrace the whole series with a fondness, which shows you want nothing but the opportunity to act it over again. I often told yon, during its course, that you were imprudently engaging your affee tions, under circumstances that must cost you a great deal of pain; that the persons, indeed, were of the greatest merit, possessing good sense, good humor, honest hearts, honest manners, and eminence in a lovely art; that the lady had, moreover, qualities and accomplishments belonging to her sex, which might form a chapter apart for her; such as music, modesty, beauty, and that softness of disposition which is the ornament of her sex, and charin of ours: but that all these considerations would increase the pang of separation; that their stay here was to be short; that you rack our whole system when you are parted from those you love, complaining that such a separation is worse than death, inasmuch as this ends our sufferings, whereas that only begins them; and that the separation would, in this instance, be the more severe, as you would probably never see them again. Heart. But they told me they would come back again the next year. Head. But, in the mean time, see what you suffer: and their return, too, depends on so many circumstances, that if you had a grain of prudence, you would not count upon it. Upon the whole, it is improbable, and therefore you should abandon the idea of ever seeing them again. Heart. May Heaven abandon me, if I do! Head. Very well. Suppose, then, they come back. They are to stay two months, and when these are expired what is to follow? Perhaps you flatter yourself they may come to America ? Heart. God only knows what is to happen. I see nothing impossible in that supposition: 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 immor. tality 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 there ride above the storms! How sublime to look down into the workhouse of nature, to see her clouds, bail, 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! With what sincere sympathy I would open every cell of my composition to receive the effusion of their woes! I would pour my tears into their wounds; and if a drop of balm could be found on the top of the Cordilleras, or at the remotest Sources of the Missouri, I would go thither myself to seek and to bring it. Deeply practised in the school of affliction, the human heart knows no joy which I have not lost, no sorrow of which I had not drank! 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! But Heaven forbid they should ever know a sorrow! Let us turn over another leaf, for this has distracted me. Head. Well. Let us put this possibility to trial, then, on another point. When you consider the character which is given of our country by the lying newspapers of London, and their credulous copyers in other countries; when you reflect that all Europe is made to believe we are a lawless banditti, in a state of absolute anarchy, cutting one another's throats, and plundering without distinction, how could you expect that any reasonable creature would venture among us? Heart. But you and I know that all this is false: that there is not a country on earth where there is greater tranquillity; where the laws are milder, or better obeyed; where every one is more attentive to his own business, or meddles less with that of others; where strangers are better received, more hospitably treated, and with a more sacred respect. Head. True, you and I know this, but your friends do not know it. Heart. But they are sensible people, who think for themselves They will ask of impartial foreigners, who have been among us, whether they saw or heard on the spot any instance of anarchy. They will judge, too, that a people occupied, as we are, in opening rivers, digging navigable canals, making roads, building public schools, establishing acade mies, erecting busts and statues to our great men, protecting religious freedom, abolishing sanguinary punishments, reforming and improving our laws in general; they will judge, I say, for themselves, whether these are not the occupations of a people at their ease; whether this is not better evidence of our true state than a London newspaper, hired to lie, and from which no truth can ever be extracted, but by reversing every thing it says. Head. I did not begin this lecture, my friend, with a view to learn from you what America is doing. Let us return, then, to our point. I wish to make you sensible how imprudent it is to place your affections without reserve on objects you must so soon lose, and whose loss, when it comes, must cost you such severe pangs. Remember the last night. You knew your friends were to leave Paris to-day. This was enough to throw you into agonies All night you tossed us from one side of the bed to the other; no sleep, no rest. The poor crippled wrist, too, never left one moment in the same position; now up, now down, now here, now there; was it to be wondered at if its pains returned! The surgeon then was to be called, and to be rated as an ignoramus, because he could not divine the cause of this extraordinary change. In fine, my friend, you must mend your manners. This is not a world to live at random in, as you do. To avoid those eternal distresses, to which you are for ever exposing us, you must learn to look forward before you take a step which may interest our peace. Every thing in this world is matter of calculation. Advance, then, with caution, the balance in your hand. Put into one scale the pleasures which any object may offer; but put fairly into the other the pains which are to follow, and see which preponderates. The making an acquaintance is not a matter of indifference. When a new one is proposed to you view it all round. Consider what advantages it presents, and to what inconveniences it may expose you. Do not bite at the bait of pleasure till you know there is no hook beneath it. The art of life is the art of avoiding pain; and he is the best pilot who steers clearest of the rocks and shoals with which it is beset. Pleasure is always before us; but misfortune is at our side; while running after that, this arrests us. The most effectual means of being secure against pain is to retire within ourselves, and to suffice for our own happiness. Those which depend on ourselves are the only pleasures a wise man will count on; for nothing is ours which another may deprive us of. Hence the inestimable value of intellectual pleasures. Ever in our power, always leading us to something new, never cloying, we ride serene and sublime above the concerns of this mortal world, contemplating truth and nature, matter and motion, the laws which bind up their existence, and that Eternal Being who made and bound them up by those laws. Let this be our employ. Leave the bustle and tumult of society to those who have not talents to occupy themselves without them. Triendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient; why enter then as volunteers into those of another? Is there so little gall poured into our cup that we must need help to drink that of our neighbor? A friend dies, or leaves us: we feel as if a limb was cut off. Ile is sick: we must watch over him, and participate of his pains. Ilis fortune is shipwrecked: ours must be laid under contribution. He loses a child, a parent, or a partner: we must mourn the loss as if it were our own. Heart. And what more sublime delight than to mingle tears with one whom the hand of Heaven hath emitten! to watch over the bed of sickness, and to beguile its tedious and its painful moments! to share our bread with one to whom misfortune has left none! This world abounds indeed with misery: to lighten its burthen we must divide it with one another. But let us now try the virtue of your mathematical balance, and as you have put into one scale the burthens of friendship, let me put its comforts into the other. When languishing, then, under disease, how grateful is the solace of our friends! how are we penetrated with their assiduities and attentions! how much are we supported by their encouragements and kind offices! When leaven has taken from us some object of our love, how sweet is it to have a bosom whereon to recline our heads, and into which we may pour the torrent of our tears! Grief, with such a comfort, is almost a luxury! In a life where we are perpetually expos ed to want and accident, yours is a wonderful proposition, to insulate ourselves, to retire from all aid, and to wrap ourselves in the mantle of self-sufficiency! For assuredly nobody will care for him, who cares for nobody. But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life; and thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine. I will recur for proof to the days we have lately passed. On these, indeed, the sun shone brightly! How gay did the face of nature appear! Hills, valleys, chateaux, gardens, rivers, every object wore its liveliest hue! Whence did they borrow it? From the presence of our charming companion. They were pleasing, be cause she seemed pleased. Alone, the scene would have been dull and insipid: the participation of it with her gave it relish. Let the gloomy monk, sequestered from the world, seek unsocial pleasures in the bottom of his cell! Let the sublimated philosopher grasp visionary happiness while pursuing phantoms dressed in the garb of truth! Their supreme wisdom is supreme folly: and they mistake for hap piness the niere absence of pain. Had they over felt the solid pleasure of one generous spasm of the heart, they would exchange for it all the frigid speculations of their lives, which you have been vaunting in such elevated terms. Believe me, then, my friend, that that is a miserable arithmetic, which could estimate friendship at nothing, or at less than nothing. Respect for you has induced me to enter into this discussion, and to hear principles uttered, which I detest and abjure. Respect for myself now obliges me to recall you into the proper limits of your office. When nature assigned us the same habitation, she gave us over it a divided empire. To you she allotted the field of science; to me that of morals. When the circle is to be squared, or the orbit of a comet to be traced; when the arch of greatest strength, or the solid of least resistance is to be investigated, take up the problem; it is yours; nature has given me no cognizance of it. In like manner, in denying to you the feelings of sympathy, of benevolence, of gratitude, of justice, of love, of friendship, she has excluded you from their control. To these she has adapted the mechanism of the heart. Morals were too essential to the happiness of man to be risked on the uncertain combinations of the head. She laid their foundation, therefore, in sentiment, not in science. That she gave to all as neces sary to all: this to a few only, as sufficing with a few. I know, indeed, that you pretend authority to the sovereign control of our conduct, in all its parts: and a respect for your grave saws and maxims, a desire to do what is right, has sometimes induced me to conform to your counsels. A few facts, however, which I can readily recall to your memory, will suffice to prove to you that nature has not organized you for our moral direction. When the poor oor wearied soldier, whom we overtook at Chickahominy, with his pack on his back, begged us to let him get up behind our chariot, you began to calculate that the road was full of soldiers, and that if all should be taken up, our horses would fail in their journey. We drove on, therefore. But soon be coming sensible you had made me do wrong, that though we cannot relieve all the distressed, we should relieve as many as we can, I turned about to take up the soldier; but he had entered a by-path, and was no more to be found: and from that moment to this, I could never find him out to ask his forgiveness Again, when the poor woman came to ask a charity in Philadelphin, you whispered, that she looked like a drunkard, and that half a dollar was enough to give her for the ale-house. Those who want the dispositions to give, easily find reasons why they ought not to give. When I sought her out afterwards, and did what I should have done at first, you know, that she employed the money immediately towards placing her child at school. If our country, when pressed with wrongs at the point of the bayonet, had been governed by its heads instead of its hearts, where should we have been now? Hanging on a gallows as high as Haman's. You began to calculate, and to compare wealth and numbers: we threw up a few pulsations of our blood; we supplied enthusiasm against wealth and numbers; we put our existence to the hazard, when the hazard seemed against us, and we saved our country: justifying, at the same time, the ways of Providence, whose precept is to do always what is right, and leave the issue to him. In short, my friend, as far as my recollection serves me, I do not know that I ever did a good thing on your sug gestion, or a dirty one without it. I do for ever, then, disclaim your interference in my province. Fill paper as you please with triangles and equares: try how many ways you can hang and combine them together. I shall never envy nor control your sublime delights. But leave me to decide when and where friendships are to be contracted. You |