ous silence. A resolution was then offered, to remove the injunction of secrecy, which shared the same fate. Finally, after a heated and protracted altercation, the minority succeeded so far as to obtain the authority to treat for an entrepot at New Orleans, and for the navigation of the Mississippi in common with Spain, down to the Floridas.

A hint of these transactions having reached the ears of Mr. Jefferson, in Paris, he was exercised with the greatest inquietude and alarm. He considered the abandonment of the navigation of the Mississippi, as, ipso facto, a dismemberment of the Union; and he improved every occasion, in his letters to America, to impress on the leading members of the government, the ungrateful character and suicidal tendency of the measure. A single specimen, found in a letter to Mr. Madison, dated January 30, '87, will suffice to display the general tenor of an active and extensive correspondence, for several months, on this vitally interesting question.

"If these transactions [insurrections] give me no uneasiness, I feel very differently at another piece of intelligence, to wit, the possibility that the navigation of the Mississippi may be abandoned to Spain. I never had any interest westward of the Allegany; and I never will have any. But I have had great opportunities of knowing the character of the people who inhabit that country; and I will venture to say, that the act which abandons the navigation of the Mississippi, is an act of separation between the eastern and western country. It is a relinquishment of five parts out of eight of the territory of the United States; an abandoment of the fairest subject for the payment of our public debts, and the chaining those debts on our own necks, in perpetuum. I have the utmost confidence in the honest intentions of those who concur in this measure; but I lament their want of acquaintance with the character and physical advantages of the people, who, right or wrong, will suppose their interests sacrificed on this occasion to the contrary interests of that part of the confederacy in possession of present power. If they declare themselves a separate people, we are incapable of a single effort to retain them. Our citizens can never be induced, either as militia or as soldiers, to go there to cut the throats of their own brothers and sons, or rather, to be themselves the subjects, instead of the perpetrators, of the parricide. Nor would that country quit the cost of being retained against the will of its inhabitants, could it be done. But it cannot be done. They are able already to rescue the navigation of the Mississippi out of the hands of Spain, and to add New Orleans to their own territory. They will be joined by the inhabitants of Louisiana. This will

bring on a war between them and Spain; and that will produce the question with us, whether it will not be worth our while to become parties with them in the war, in order to re-unite them with us, and thus correct our error. And were I to permit my forebodings to go one step further, I should predict, that the inhabitants of the United States would force their rulers to take the affirmative of that question. I wish I may be mistaken in all these opinions."

The right of the United States to the free navigation of the Mississippi, in its whole extent, and the establishment of that right upon an immovable basis, was a subject which early engaged the attention of Mr. Jefferson. It was one of those enterprises of vast national utility, which seemed to match his patriotism, and to summon all his powers into action. He persevered in the effort, through a period of fifteen years, in different public stations; and his agency in producing the final result, was scarcely less distinguished, though less direct and efficacious, than in accomplishing the splendid achievement of the acquisition of Louisiana. The question was not definitively settled until 1803, when, being at the head of the nation, he appointed Mr. Monroe minister to Madrid, for the express purpose of concluding a final arrangement with that gov ernment, covering all the points at issue growing out of the subject. The mission was as honorable as it was successful.

Mr. Jefferson's watchfulness over the interests of America, while in Europe, exceeds all calculation. Nothing escaped his notice, which he thought could be made useful in his own country. The southern States are indebted to him for the introduction of the culture of upland rice. In 1790, he procured a cask of this species of rice, from the river Denbigh, in Africa, about latitude 9 deg. 30 min. north, which he sent to Charleston, in the hope that it would supersede the culture of the wet rice, which renders South Carolina and Georgia so pestilential through the summer. The quantity was divided at Charleston, and a part sent to Georgia, by his directions. The cultivation of this rice has now become general in the upper parts of Georgia and South Carolina, and is highly prized. It was supposed by Mr. Jefferson, that it might be grown successfully in Tennessee and Kentucky. He also endeavoured to obtain the seed of the Cochin-China rice, for the purpose of introducing its cultivation in the same States; but it does not appear whether he was successful or not. In the same spirit of

unremitting attention to the interests of his infant country, he transmitted from Marseilles to Charleston, a great variety of olive plants, for experimenting their growth in South Carolina and Georgia. "The greatest service," says he, "which can be rendered any country is, to add an useful plant to its culture; especially a bread grain; next in value to bread, is oil." These plants were tried, and are now flourishing at the south; although not yet multiplied extensively, they will be the germ of that invaluable species of cultivation in those States.

All the powers of Mr. Jefferson seemed to kindle in the pursuit of multiplying objects of profitable agriculture in America, and of improving the husbandry of those already established as staples. With this patriotic view, he made a tour into the southern parts of France, and the northern of Italy, in which he passed three months, mingling private gratification with services of the highest public utility. His plan was to visit the ports along the western and southern coast of France, particularly Marseilles, Bordeaux, Nantes, and L'Orient, to obtain such information as would enable him to judge of the practicability of making further improvements in our commerce with the southern provinces of France; to visit the canal of Languedoc, and possess himself of such information in that species of navigation, as might be useful to communicate to his countrymen; and thence to pass into the northern provinces of Italy, to examine minutely the different subjects of culture in those munificent regions, to ascertain what improvements might be made in America, in the culture and husbandry of rice and other staples common to both countries; and, if any, what other productions of that climate, might be advantageously introduced, as articles of domestic growth, into the southern States. Another object with him was, to try the mineral waters of Aix, in Provence, for a dislocated wrist, unsuccessfully set,. in pursuance of the advice of his surgeon.

He left Paris, therefore, on the 28th of Febuary, '87, and proceeded up the Seine, through Champagne and Burgundy, and down the Rhone through the Beaujolais, by Lyons, Avignon, Nismes, to Aix. Receiving, on trial, no benefit from the mineral waters of that place, he bent his course into the rice countries of Italy, taking his route by Marseilles, Toulon, Hieres, Nice, across the Col de Tende, by Coni, Turin, Vercelli, Novara, Milan, Pavia, Novi,

Genoa. Thence returning, he passed along the coast, by Savona,. Noli, Albenga, Oneglia, Monaco, Nice, Antibes, Frejus, Aix, Marseilles, Avignon, Nismes, Montpellier, Frontignan, Sette, Agde, and along the canal of Languedoc, by Beziers, Narbonne, Carcassonne, Castelnaudari, through the Souterrain of St. Feriol, and back by Castelnaudari, to Toulouse; thence to Montauban, and down the Garonne by Langon, to Bordeaux. Thence to Rochefort, la Rochelle, Nantes, L'Orient; then back by Rennes to Nantes, and up the Loire, by Angers, Tours, Amboise, Blois, to Orleans; thence direct to Paris, where he arrived on the 10th of June. Soon after returning from this journey, he was joined by his younger daughter, Maria, from Virginia, the youngest having died some time before.

Mr. Jefferson was impressed with delightful sensations in traversing the luxurious provinces of Southern France, where the choicest blessings of heaven are spread in profusion before the eye; but his mind assumed a gloomy and contemplative mood, on visiting the storied grounds of Italy, where the richest munificence of nature is blasted by the hand of tyranny, and the ruins of classic grandeur enhance the melancholy contrast, at every step. He travelled incognito, and insinuated himself into every position, from which he might derive a knowledge of the inhabitants, their manners, and modes of living, their implements of husbandry and dairy, their inventions and improvements in these arts, their farms, productions, their wants and superfluities, their means and degree of happiness, and causes of misery. The novelty and variety of the scenes through which he passed, the multitude of curious and interesting objects which he encountered, presented a perpetual feast to his enquiring mind; nor could they fail to impart the most desirable lessons to the philosopher, the philanthropist, and the statesman of unvitiated principles. From Nice, under date of April 19th, he writes to the Marquis de La Fayette :

"I am constantly roving about to see what I have never seen before, and shall never see again. In the great cities, I go to see what travellers think alone worthy of being seen; but I make a job of it, and generally gulp it all down in a day. On the other hand, I am never satiated with rambling through the fields and farms, examining the culture and cultivators with a degree of curi osity, which makes some take me to be a fool, and others to be much wiser than I am. * From the first olive fields of

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Pierrelatte, to the orangeries of Hieres, has been continued rapture to me. I have often wished for you. I think you have not made this journey. It is a pleasure you have to come, and an improvement to be added to the many you have already made. It will be a great comfort to you, to know, from your own inspection, the condition of all the provinces of your own country, and it will be interesting to them at some future day, to be known to you. This is, perhaps, the only moment of your life, in which you can acquire that knowledge. And to do it most effectually, you must be abso lutely 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."

ree,

From Lyons to Nismes Mr. Jefferson was 'nourished with the remains of Roman grandeur.' He was immersed in antiquities from morning to night. He was transported back to the times of the Cæsars, the intrigues of their courts, the oppressions of their prætors, and prefects. To him the city of Rome seemed actually existing in all the magnificence of its meridian glory; and he was filled with alarm in momentary anticipation of the irruptions of the Goths, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, and Vandals. Under date of Nismes, he writes to the Countess de Tesse, in a mood, which illustrates the extravagance of his passion for ancient architecture: "Here I am, Madam, gazing whole hours at the Maison Quarlike a lover at his mistress. The stocking-weavers and silkspinners around it, consider me as a hypochondriac Englishman, about to write with a pistol the last chapter of his history. This is the second time I have been in love since I left Paris. The first was with a Diana at the Chateau de Lay-Epinaye in Beaujolais, a delicious morsel of sculpture, by M. A. Slodtz. This, you will say, was in rule, to fall in love with a female beauty: but with a house! It is out of all precedent. No, Madam, it is not without a precedent, in my own history. While in Paris, I was violently smitten with the Hotel de Salm, and used to go to the Tuileries, almost daily, to look at it. The loueuse des chaises, inattentive to my passion, never had the complaisance to place a chair there, so that, sitting on the parapet, and twisting my neck round to see the object of my admiration, I generally left it with a torticollis."

Mr. Jefferson kept a diary of his excursion into Italy, in which he noted, with minuteness, every circumstance, which he thought