don themselves to hilarity. As to the letters of public or famous persons, are they not generally written under the expectation or dread of ultimate publication? Happily we have other means than these few epistles about Belinda and the girls, of knowing how this student of law passed his time, both at the capital and at home.

He came of age in April, 1764. According to an old British custom, he signalized the year by causing an avenue of trees to be planted near his house. Time has dealt harshly with it; for, after a hundred and ten years, there are only a few battered, decaying trees left, locusts and sycamores. He did not spend this birthday at home, but at Williamsburg, where he and all the other mathematical heads of the place were intent upon a grand operation of measurement. "Every thing," he writes to Page, "is now ready for taking the height of this place above the water of the creeks," two streams, one a tributary of the James, and the other of the York, both navigable to within a mile of Williamsburg; and he hopes Page will come to take part in the interesting affair, "if his mistress can spare him."

He did not delay in accepting the responsibilities of his position as a leading gentleman of his county. We find him soon in two of his father's offices, justice of the peace and vestryman of the parish. Not long after coming of age he set on foot a public improvement of importance to his neighborhood. The river Rivanna, that flowed by his land, although a considerable stream, was so obstructed as to be useless for purposes of navigation. Scarcely an empty canoe had ever floated on it to the James. Upon reaching home he examined its channel; and, perceiving that it could be cleared for twenty-two miles without too great expense, he set on foot a subscription for the purpose, which was successful; and, after procuring an act of the legislature authorizing the work, he caused it to be done. The result was, that he and his neighbors used the river thenceforth for carrying down all the produce of their farms. Thus did this colonial squire announce and celebrate his coming of age.

The young man took hold of his business as a farmer in a manner which showed that the genuine culture of the mind is the best preparation for the common as well as for the higher duties of life. In every thing he did he was the educated being. Was there ever a mortal so exact, so punctual, so indefatigable as he, in recording and

tabularizing details? He may be said to have lived pen in hand. He kept a garden-book, a farm-book, a weather-book, a receipt-book, a pocket-expenditure book, and, later, a fee-book; and there was nothing too trivial to be entered in one of them, provided it really had any relation to matters of importance. In the small, neat hand then common in Virginia, he would record in his pocket-book such items as these: "Put into the church-box, 1d. ;" "Paid a barber, 11d.; ""Paid for pins, 4/2;" "Paid for whetting penknife, 4d. ;" "Paid my part for an express to Williamsburg, 10s.;" "Paid Bell for books, 35s.;" "Paid postage, 8/3." In his garden-book, for some pages of which we are indebted to Mr. Randall, may be read countless entries like the following: "March 30, sowed a patch of later peas;" "July 15, planted out celery;" "July 22, had the last dish of our spring peas;" "March 31, grafted five French chestnuts into two stocks of common chestnut." His garden-books show that he was a bold and constant experimenter, always eager to try foreign seeds and roots, of which he introduced a great number in the course of his life. They show, also, that he was a close observer and calculator. His weather-book, of which I possess a few pages, given to me by Mr. Randall, is a wonder of neatness and minuteness,fifty-nine days' weather history on one small page. This is one day's record: "March 24, at 6.30, A.M., ther., 27°; barom. 25°, wind N. W. (force of wind not stated); weather, clear after rain, Blue Ridge and higher parts of S. W., mountain covered with snow. No snow here, but much ice; black frost." Multiply this by fifty-nine, and you have the contents of one page of his weather-book, every word of which, after the lapse of a century, is as clear and legible as diamond type. It is ruled in ten columns, one for each class of entries. This practice of minute record, which remained with him to the end of his days, he began while he was still a student. Nor did he ever content himself with the mere records of items. These were regularly reviewed, added, compared, and utilized in every possible way. It was the most remarkable of all his habits.

Interesting events were occurring in the family at the Shadwell farm-house. During his first year in college one of his sisters was married; and now, soon after his coming of age, another marriage in the family, and one that proved of far more importance to the head of the house, became probable.

Among the most beloved of his schoolfellows was Dabney Carr, a youth destined like himself to the bar. It was that Dabney Carr who fills the place in the annals and the hearts of Virginia which young Josiah Quincy occupies in those of Massachusetts; both having died in the prime of early manhood, at the beginning of the Revolution, after figuring honorably in its opening scenes. At this time, when Jefferson was coming into his duties as head of his family, clearing out his river, and watching his early peas, Dabney Carr was getting into practice as a country lawyer; and when Jefferson was at home, during the long summers, the two friends and fellow-students were inseparable. Two miles from Jefferson's home was an isolated mountain, five hundred and eighty feet high, which he afterwards named Monticello, or The Little Mount, covered then to the summit with the primeval forest. High up on this mountain, in the deepest shade of the luxuriant woods, under an ancient oak of vast size, the young friends constructed a rustic seat; and thither, in the summer mornings, they would ride with their law-books, and pass peaceful days there in study and conversation. Both of them became strongly attached to the spot. They made a compact, that whichever of them died first should be buried by the other under that grand old tree. The compact was fulfilled; and the place was, long after, enclosed and made the burial-place of the Jeffersons; so that both the friends now repose on the spot where they studied together in their youth. It was these happy visits to the mountain that led to its selection, by and by, as the site of Jefferson's abode.

When the young men returned to Shadwell at the close of the day, they returned to a house full of sisters, three of whom were young ladies, twenty-five, twenty-one, nineteen years of age; the work of the day done, the costume of the evening assumed, the evening meal ready, the violin and music in the next room. It was the beautiful and gifted Martha, in her ninteenth year, upon whom Dabney Carr fixed his affections; and in the summer vacation of 1765 Jefferson had the pleasure of seeing them married. The bridegroom had still his fortune to make; and they went away to live, a few miles off, in the next county of Louisa, in a house amusing to them all for its smallness and simplicity. It was one of the triumphant marriages. "This friend of ours, Page," wrote Jefferson, when they had been five years married, "in a very small house, with a table, half a dozen chairs, and one or two servants, is the happiest man in the universe.

Every incident in life he so takes as to render it a source of pleasure. With as much benevolence as the heart of man will hold, but with an utter neglect of the costly apparatus of life, he exhibits to the world a new phenomenon in philosophy, the Samian sage in the tub of the cynic." To this pleasing picture, Mr. Wirt adds, from tradition current in Virginia, that Dabney Carr was the most formidable rival in oratory that Patrick Henry had among the lawyers of his own age; and that his person was of engaging elegance, and his voice finely toned. In old age Mr. Jefferson wrote of him as the man who united inflexible firmness of principle to the most perfect amiability.

But on this happy wedding-day in July the shadow of death already rested upon the young student's home. His eldest sister, Jane, the best of all his friends hitherto, was approaching her end. She died in October, leaving a void in the home and the heart of her brother that was never quite filled. From the funeral of this beloved sister he was summoned soon, by the opening of the General Court, to resume his law-studies at Williamsburg.

CHAPTER IX.

THE LAW-STUDENT.

NOT that he discontinued those studies at home. He used, in after years, to tell his grandchildren, that, when he was a law-student, he kept a clock in his bedroom at Shadwell, on a shelf opposite his bed; and his rule was to get up in the summer mornings as soon as he could see what o'clock it was, and begin his day's work at once. In the winter he rose at five, and went to bed at nine. He did a fair day's work at his law-books every day, even at home, besides attending to company, besides his vigorous gallop on horseback, besides walking to the top of Monticello, besides looking closely to his garden and farm, besides caressing his violin, besides keeping up his Latin, Greek, French, and an extensive system of other reading. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to conclude that at the capital he gave himself to study more completely than at home; and it is there that we can best observe him as a student.

The law is not an easy nut to crack, even in these days, after so much of its husk has been cut away by the Broughams and the Dudley Fields of the legal profession. It will never be easy to apply the eternal principles of right to the " cases that arise in our complicated human life. But, when Jefferson studied law, generations of ingenious men had spent their lives in investing the science of justice with difficulties, artificial and needless. They had wrought with such success, that if our young justice of the peace had been required to record that John Jones had hanged himself at Williamsburg, he would have been obliged to say, and I now copy from a Virginia justice's own book, in which his name appears as a subscriber,— that "John Jones, not having the fear of God before his eyes, but being moved and seduced by the instigation of the Devil, at Williamsburg, in a certain wood as aforesaid, standing and being, the said John