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the day which 'joins us to the great majority.' But whatever is to be our destiny, wisdom, as well as duty, dictates that we should acquiesce in the will of Him whose it is to give and take away, and be contented in the enjoyment of those who are still permitted to be with us. Of those connected by blood, the number does not depend on us. But friends we have, if we have merited them. Those of our earliest years stand nearest in our affections. But in this, too, you and I have been unlucky. Of our college friends (and they are the dearest) how few have stood with us in the great political questions which have agitated our country: and these were of a nature to justify agitation. I did not believe the Lilliputian fetters of that day strong enough to have bound so many."

One of the last of Mr. Jefferson's letters, was written near the close of his life. It is addressed to a young person for whom he appears to have had an affectionate regard, and is summed up in these solemn and impressive terms:

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"This letter will, as to you, be as one from the grave before you can weigh its counsels. Your affectionate and excellent father, has requested that I would address to you something which might possibly have a favourable influence on the course of life you have to run, and I, too, as a namesake, feel an interest in that course. Few words will be necessary with good dispositions on your part. Adore God. Reverence and cherish your parents. Love your neighbour as yourself, and, your country more than yourself. Be just. Be true. Murmur not at the ways of Providence. So shall the

life into which you have entered, be the portal to one of eternal and ineffable bliss. And if to the dead it is permitted to care for the things of this world, every action of your life will be under my regard. Farewell."

Shortly after Mr. Jefferson's return to Monticello, it having been proposed to form a college in his neighbourhood, he addressed a letter to the trustees, in which he sketched a plan for the establishment of a general system of education in Virginia. This appears to have led the way to an act of the legislature in the year 1818, by which commissioners were appointed with' authority to select a site and form a plan for a university on a large scale. Of these commissioners, Mr. Jefferson was unanimously chosen the chairman, and on the fourth day of August, 1818, he framed a report, embracing the principles on which it was proposed the institution should be formed. The situation selected for it was at Charlottesville, a town at the foot of the mountain on which Mr. Jefferson resided. The plan was such as to combine elegance and utility, with the power of enlarging it to any extent which its future prosperity may require; the instruction extended to the various branches of learning which a citizen will require in his intercourse between man and man, in the improvement of his morals and faculties, and in the knowledge and exercise of his social rights. Such an education, Mr. Jefferson observes, “generates habits of application and the love of virtue; and controls, by the force of habit, any innate obliquities in our moral organization. We should be far, too, from dis couraging the persuasion, that man is fixed, by the law of his nature, at a given point; that his improvement

is a chimera, and the hope delusive of rendering ourselves wiser, happier, or better than our forefathers were. We need look back only half a century, to times which many now living remember well, and see the wonderful advances in the sciences and arts which have been made within that period. Some of these have rendered the elements themselves subservient to the purposes of man, have harnessed them to the yoke of his labours, and effected the great blessings of moderating his own, of accomplishing what was beyond his feeble force, and of extending the comforts of life to a much enlarged circle, to those who had before known its necessaries only. That these are not the vain dreams of sanguine hope, we have before our eyes real and living examples. What but education has advanced us beyond the condition of our indigenous neighbours? and what chains them to their present state of barbarism and wretchedness, but a bigoted veneration for the supposed superlative wisdom of their fathers, and the preposterous idea that they are to look backward for better things, and not forward, longing, as it should seem, to return to the days of eating acorns and roots, rather than indulge in the degeneracies of civilization? And how much more encouraging to the achievements of science and improvement is this, than the desponding view that the condition of man cannot be meliorated, that what has been must ever be, and that to secure ourselves where we are, we must tread, with awful reverence, in the footsteps of our fathers. This doctrine is the genuine fruit of the alliance between church and state, the tenants of which, finding themselves but too well in their present

position, oppose all advances which might unmask their usurpations, and monopolies of honours, wealth, and power, and fear every change, as endangering the comforts they now hold."

The report then proceeds to state the various arrangements which should be adopted, for the conduct of so extensive an institution; and concludes with a statement of its financial situation. The plan thus proposed was adopted by the legislature. "Mr. Jefferson was elected the rector of the new institution, and from that period he devoted himself with unceasing ardour to carry it into effect. Nothing, indeed, could exceed his fond desire for its success. It appeared to be the object of all his hopes and thoughts in the declining years of his life. He rode every morning, when the weather would permit, to inspect its progress. He prepared with his own hands the drawings and plans for the workmen. He stood over them as they proceeded with a sort of parental care and anxiety, and when the inclemency of the season, or the infirmity of age, prevented his visits, a telescope was placed on a terrace near his house, by means of, which he could inspect the progress of the work. After its completion, he might often be seen pacing slowly along the porticoes or cloisters which extend in front of the dormitories of the students, occasionally conversing with them, and viewing the establishment with a natural and honourable pride. In the library is carefully preserved the catalogue written by himself, in which he has collected the names, best editions, and value of all works of whatever language in literature and science, which he thought necessary to form a complete library;

and in examining it, one is really less struck with the research and various knowledge required for its compilation, than the additional proof of that anxious care which seemed to search out all the means of fostering and improving the institution he had formed."

But from these pleasant occupations he was roused to the scenes of worldly suffering which now surrounded him. With thoughtless generosity, he had devoted the zeal of his youth and the experience of his maturer years to the service of his fellow citizens, and now, in his old age, he found himself doomed to that poverty which he had no longer the ability to repel. It was, however, an honourable poverty, incurred in the performance of publick duties, or private generosity, unsullied by extravagance and unattended by crime. And it is difficult to imagine how, in his case, it could have been avoided. For more than fifty years he had been actively engaged in publick office, generally at a distance from his own estate; and though his patrimony was originally large, it could not but be impaired by this unavoidable neglect. In retiring from the exalted station he had enjoyed, he did not enter on a less conspicuous scene; he had become identified with the greatness and glory of his country, he was the object of attraction to crowds of anxious and admiring guests, and, unless by coldly closing his doors, it was impossible to limit the expenses he was thus obliged to occur.

In this emergency, he applied to the legislature of Virginia, who, in the spring of 1826, partially relieved him from his embarrassment, by authorizing him to dispose of his estates by lottery, in order that a fair

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