Finest lost his senses. His sister, Mrs. Carr,

gim me vem into his library, where he fainted, muir e lag isensie that the family began to fear that TIPIT. They brought in a pallet, and lifted

The summed only to a sense of immeasurable woe. I vid was to be the solace of all his future rozam na de rem at night; and even then, such was as dus get that she was amazed and confounded. wes te smuned in that apartment, attended day and He walked, as she related, almost incesAmin only lying down now and then, when *** exhausted, upon the pallet that had been hurriedly vie heat in his fainting fit. When at last he left the krasi ze vuil zen horseback hours and hours, roaming about H T'S INVIZLI DRs, in the dense woods, along the paths least De will ampanied only by his daughter,—"a solitary wit

She SS 3 3ay a violent burst of grief, the remembrance & vo... I has Nosecrated particular scenes beyond the power of time

Strassed some weeks. He fell into what he called "a stupor of Hing” from with the daily round of domestic duties could not Jos Lim. Meanwhile the intelligence of his loss reached Congress, THEL IL SESSUR s Philadelphia, waiting with extreme solicitude the SSTE NË THE DESIcations for peace at Paris. Six months had already passed since the negotiations had been begun, during the last three of visch Dr. Franklin had been laid aside by an attack of his disease. Jesting the chief burden to be borne by Mr. Jay alone. It Dow occurred to the Virginia members, that, as the causes of Mr. Jeferson's previous declining to cross the sea were removed, he might be willing to join the commission to treat for peace. He was at once elected a plenipotentiary by a unanimous vote, and, as Madison reports, without a single adverse remark." The news of his election reached him November 25, 1782, eleven weeks after the death of his wife, when he had gone with his troop of children,daughters, nephews, and nieces, nine in all, to a secluded estate in Chesterfield County to have them inoculated.

It was like a trumpet-call to a war-horse standing listless under a tree in the pasture, after a rest from the exhaustion and wounds of a campaign. He accepted instantly. He flew to his long-neglected

desk to write the necessary letters, and to bring up the arrears in his correspondence; for the French minister had offered him a passage in a man-of-war which was to sail from Baltimore in three weeks, and in that vessel his beloved Marquis de Chastellux was also to cross the ocean! Enchanting prospect! But there is many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip. When he reached the port, after many delays, it was only to discover that the enemy's fleet blocked the pathway to the sea; and before the admiral saw a chance to elude them came the ecstatic news that the preliminaries had been signed, and there was no need of his going. So he wrote to Mr. Jay to give up the lodgings in Paris which he had requested him to engage; and in May, 1783, he was at home once more.

seem elegant and becoming. Anglo-Saxons are only respectable when they are strictly virtuous. It has not been given to us to lie with grace, and sin with dignity. We are nothing if not moral. And, doubtless, if a man permits himself to conduct his life on an animal basis, it is honester in him, it is better for others, for him to appear the beast he is. The dissoluteness of the English officers at Philadelphia and New York, being open and offensive, was not calculated to make American youth cast aside the lessons of purity which they had learned in their clean and honorable homes. Dashing down Chestnut Street in a curricle, with a brazen hussy by your side, is not as pretty a feat as carrying on what was styled "an intrigue," in an elegant house. It was these French officers who infected many American youths, besides Hamilton and Burr and their young friends, with the most erroneous and pernicious idea that ever deluded youth, that it is but a trifling, if not a becoming, lapse to be unchaste.

Jefferson, who had the happy art of getting the good, and letting alone the evil, of whatever he encountered on his way through life, was strongly drawn to this Marquis de Chastellux, a man of mature age, of some note in literature, a member of the Academy, and full of the peculiar spirit of his class and time. Jefferson had invited him to visit Monticello. On an afternoon in the first week of May, 1782, behold the marquis and his three friends - — a cavalcade of four gentlemen, six mounted servants, and a led horse - winding up the Little Mount, and coming in sight of the "rather elegant," unfinished Italian villa on its summit. I am afraid Mrs. Jefferson saw this brave company dismount with some dismay, for she was not in a condition to entertain strangers. They, however, were well pleased to see a bit of Europe in those western wilds. "Mr. Jefferson," wrote the marquis, "is the first American who has consulted the fine arts to know how he should shelter himself from the weather;" which was a sweeping statement, though not far from the truth. Upon entering, he met the master of the house,—"a man not yet forty, tall, and with a mild and pleasing countenance;""an American, who, without ever having quitted his own country, is at once a musician, skilled in drawing, a geometrician, an astronomer, a natural philosopher, legislator, and statesman;" "a philosopher in voluntary retirement from the world and public business," because "the minds of his countrymen are not yet in a condition either to

bear the light or to suffer contradiction;" blessed with "a mild and amiable wife, and charming children of whose education he himself takes charge." Mr. Jefferson, he adds, received his invited guest without any show of cordiality, even with something like coldness; but, before they had conversed two hours, they were as intimate as if they had passed their whole lives together. During four days the joy of their intercourse never lessened; for their conversation, "always varied and interesting, was supported by that sweet satisfaction experienced by two persons, who, in communicating their sentiments and opinions, are invariably in unison, and who understand one another at the first hint."

It so chanced that the Frenchman was a lover of Ossian. "I recollect with pleasure," he tells us, "that, as we were conversing one evening over a bowl of punch, after Mrs. Jefferson had retired, our conversation turned on the poems of Ossian. It was a spark of electricity which passed rapidly from one to the other. We recollected the passages in those sublime poems which had particularly struck us, and entertained with them my fellow-travellers, who fortunately knew English well. In our enthusiasm the book was sent for, and placed near the bowl, where, by their mutual aid, the night advanced imperceptibly upon us. Sometimes natural philosophy, at others politics or the arts, were the topics of our conversation; for no object had escaped Mr. Jefferson, and it seemed as if from his youth he had placed his mind, as he had done his house, on an elevated situation, from which he might contemplate the universe."

Sometimes he rambled with his guests about the grounds, showing them his little herd of deer, a score in number. "He amuses himself by feeding them with Indian corn, of which they are very fond, and which they eat out of his hand. I followed him one evening into a deep valley, where they are accustomed to assemble towards the close of the day, and saw them walk, run, and bound;" but neither guest nor host could decide upon the family to which they belonged. In other branches of natural science the marquis found Mr. Jefferson more proficient, particularly in meteorology. He had made, in conjunction with Professor Madison of William and Mary, a series of observations of the ruling winds at Williamsburg and at Monticello, and discovered, that, while the north-east wind had blown one hundred and twenty-seven times at Williamsburg, it had blown but thirty-two times at Monticello. The four

days passed like four minutes, says the marquis. The party of Frenchmen continued their journey towards the Natural Bridge, on land belonging to their host, eighty miles distant. Mr. Jefferson would have gone with them: "but his wife being expected every moment to lie in, as he is as good a husband as he is an excellent philosopher and virtuous citizen, he only acted as my guide for about sixteen miles, to the passage of the little River Mechinn, where we parted, and, I presume to flatter myself, with mutual regret."

He might flatter himself so far. Mr. Jefferson was extremely pleased with him; and this was the beginning of that fondness for the French people which he carried with him through the rest of his life.