enclosed letter to Madame de Staël, and to ask the favor of you to have it delivered at the hotel of M. de Lessert without passing through the post-office.

In your answer of June 7 to mine of May 18, you mentioned that you did not understand to what proceeding of Congress I alluded as likely to produce a removal of most of the members, and that by a spontaneous movement of the people, unsuggested by the newspapers, which had been silent on it. I alluded to the law giving themselves 1500 D. a year. There has never been an instant before of so unanimous an opinion of the people, and that through every State in the Union. A very few members of the first order of merit in the House will be re-elected, Clay, of Kentucky, by a small majority, and a few others.

But the almost entire mass will go out, not

its publication? On that question, I have no hesitation on your account, as well as that of the public. To the latter, it will be valuable; and honourable to yourself.

"You must expect to be criticised; and, by a former letter I see you expect it. By the Quarterly Reviewers you will be hacked and hewed, with tomahawk and scalping-knife. Those of Edinburgh, with the same anti-American prejudices, but sometimes considering us as allies against their administration, will do it more decently.

"They will assume, as a model for biography, the familiar manner of Plutarch, or scanty manner of Nepos, and try you, perhaps, by these tests. But they can only prove that your style is different from theirs; not that it is not good.

"I have always very much dispised the artificial canons of criticism. When I have read a work in prose or poetry, or seen a painting, a statue, etc., I have only asked myself whether it gives me pleasure, whether it is animating, interesting, attaching? If it is, it is good for these reasons. On these grounds you will be safe. Those who take up your book, will find they cannot lay it down, and this will be its best criticism.

"You have certainly practised vigorously the precept of de mortuis nil nisi bonum. This presents a very difficult question,—whether one only or both sides of the medal shall be presented. It constitutes,

only those who supported the law or voted for it, or skulked from the vote, but those who voted against it or opposed it actively, if they took the money; and the examples of refusals to take it were very

perhaps, the distinction between panegyric and history. On this, opinions are much divided-and, perhaps, may be so on this feature And no of your work. On the whole, however, you have nothing to fear; at least if my views are not very different from the common. one will see its appearance with more pleasure than myself, as no one can, with more truth, give you assurances of great respect and affectionate attachment."

"POPLAR FOREST. Sep. 29, 16.

'DEAR SIR,-I found, on my arrival here the 2d parcel of your sheets, which I have read with the same avidity and pleasure as the former. This proves they will experience no delay in my hands, and that I consider them as worthy everything I can do for them. They need indeed but little, or rather I should say nothing. I have however When I read the hazarded some suggestions on a paper inclosed. former sheets, I did not consider the article of style as within my jurisdiction. However since you ask observations on that, and suggest doubts entertained by yourself on a particular quality of it, I will candidly say that I think some passages of the former sheets too flowery for the sober taste of history. It will please young readers in it's present form, but to the older it would give more pleasure and confidence to have some exuberances lightly pruned. I say lightly, because your style is naturally rich and captivating, and would suffer if submitted to the rasp of a rude hand. A few excrescences may be rubbed off by a delicate touch; but better too little than too much correction. In the 2d parcel of sheets, altho' read with an eye to your request, I have found nothing of this kind. I thus comply with your desire; but on the condition originally prescribed, that you shall consider my observations as mere suggestions, meant to recall the subject to a revision by yourself, and that no change be made in consequence of them but on the confirmed dictates of your own judgement. I have no amour-propre which will suffer by having hazarded a false criticism. On the contrary I should regret were the genuine character of your composition to be adulterated by any foreign ingredient. I return to Albermarle within a week. Shall stay there 10. days, come back and pass here October and part of November. I salute you affectionately."

"MONTICELLO, Oct. 8, 16.

"DEAR SIR,-I received your 3d parcel of sheets just as I was leaving Poplar Forest, and have read them with the usual pleasure. They

few. The next Congress, then, Federal as well as Republican, will be almost wholly of new members.

We have had the most extraordinary year of drought and cold ever known in the history of America. In June, instead of 3 inches, our average of rain for that month, we only had of an inch; in

relate however to the period of time exactly, during which I was absent in Europe. Consequently I am without knolege of the facts they state. Indeed they are mostly new history to me.

“On the subject of style they are not liable to the doubts I hazarded on the 1st parcel, unless a short passage in page 198, should be thought too poetical. Indeed as I read the 2d & 3d parcels with attentions to style and found them not subject to the observations I made on the first, (which were from memory only, & after I had parted with them) I have suspected that a revisal might have corrected my opinion on the Ist. Of this however you will judge. One only fact in the last sheets was within my knolege, that relating to Philips, and on this I had formerly given you explanations. I am very glad indeed that you have examined the records, and established truth in this case. How Mr. Randolph could indulge himself in a statement of facts, so solemnly made, the falsehood of every article of which had been known to himself particularly; and how Mr. Henry could be silent under such a perversion of facts known to himself, agreed on at a consultation with members whom he invited to the palace to advise with on the occasion, and done at his request according to what was concluded, is perfectly unaccountable. Not that I consider Mr. Randolph as misstating intentionally, or desiring to boulster an argument at the expence of an absent person: for there were no unsocial dispositions between him & myself; and as little do I impute to Mr. Henry any willingness to leave on my shoulders a charge which he could so easily have disproved. The fact must have been that they were both out of their heads on that occasion. Still not the less injuriously to me, whom Mr. Randolph might as well have named, as the journals shewed I was the first named of the Committee. Would it be out of place for you to refer by a note to the countenance which Judge Tucker has given to this misrepresentation, by making strictures on it, in his Blackstone, as if it were true? It is such a calumny on our revolutionary government as should be eradicated from history, and especially from that of this state, which justly prides itself on having gone thro' the revolution without a single example of capital punishment connected with that. Ever affectionately yours."

August, instead of 9 inches our average, we had only of an inch; and still it continues. The summer, too, has been as cold as a moderate winter. In every State north of this there has been frost in every month of the year; in this State we had none in June and July, but those of August killed much corn over the mountains. The crop of corn through the Atlantic States will probably be less than onethird of an ordinary one, that of tobacco still less, and of mean quality. The crop of wheat was middling in quantity, but excellent in quality. But every species of bread grain taken together will not be sufficient for the subsistence of the inhabitants, and the exportation of flour, already begun by the indebted and the improvident, to whatsoever degree it may be carried, will be exactly so much taken from the mouths of our own citizens. My anxieties on this subject are the greater, because I remember the deaths which the drought of 1755 in Virginia produced from the want of food.

There are not to be the smallest opposition to the election of Monroe and Tompkins, the Republicans being undivided and the Federalists desperate. The Hartford Convention and peace of Ghent have nearly annihilated them.

Our State is becoming clamorous for a convention and amendment for their constitution, and I believe will obtain it. It was the first constitution formed in the United States, and of course the most imperfect. The other States improved in theirs in proportion as new precedents were added, and most of them have since amended. We have entered on a liberal plan

of internal improvements, and the universal approbation of it will encourage and insure its prosecution. I recollect nothing else domestic worth noting to you, and therefore place here my respectful and affectionate salutations.

TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE
(JAMES MONROE.)

J. MSS.

MONTICELLO, October 16, 1816.

DEAR SIR,-If it be proposed to place an inscription on the capitol, the lapidary style requires that essential facts only should be stated, and these with a brevity admitting no superfluous word. The essential facts in the two inscriptions proposed are these:

FOUNDED 1791.-BURNT BY A BRITISH ARMY 1814.-RESTORED BY CONGRESS 1817.

The reasons for this brevity are that the letters must be of extraordinary magnitude to be read from below; that little space is allowed them, being usually put into a pediment or in a frize, or on a small tablet on the wall; and in our case, a third reason may be added, that no passion can be imputed to this inscription, every word being justifiable from the most classical examples.

But a question of more importance is whether there should be one at all? The barbarism of the conflagration will immortalize that of the nation. It will place them forever in degraded comparison with the execrated Bonaparte, who, in possession of almost every capitol in Europe, injured no one. Of this, history will take care, which all will read, while our inscription will