for the freedom of two of his faithful body servants, to go into effect one year after his decease; to them he gave the services of two others until they should reach the age of twenty-one years, when they, too, should be free. It is probable that the embarrassments under which he labored for several years, caused him to harden his heart and leave the remainder of his slaves the property of his daughter and grand-children, and to provide for the payment of his debts. Under the laws of Virginia, the debts must needs be satisfied before any property could be reserved by will, and slaves being held as property, were included in the estate. As the estate did not sell for enough to pay his debts within forty thousand dollars, the slaves were sacrificed with other personal property and real

estate.

The life of Mr. Jefferson, after his retirement from public service, was was that of a quiet country gentleman. The greater portion of each day was passed in superintending affairs connected with his estate. After dinner he conversed with his friends, and the evening was generally occu pied with reading. During the early morning he was usually to be found in his study, reading and writing. His correspondence occupied much time, embraced many and varied subjects, and extended to many persons in foreign countries, besides prominent persons in his own country. Up to this time his life had been so filled with political matters, and subjects connected with the growth, development, and perpetuation of the republic, as to forbid any attention to the subjects that had engrossed his mind to a great extent in his earlier years. He had been unable to keep pace with the growth and development of the sciences that had attracted his attention, and when at last he was relieved from public duties and had time to devote to their pursuit, the fascination they once had was vanished. He devoted much time, however, to the study of classic literature. In his youth he had loved poetry, but in his later years his taste for it declined. He always delighted in the poetry of Homer, and never tired of the Athenian tragedies. He read the works of Euripides, Sophocles, Æschuylus, Dante, Virgil, Corneille, and others, in the original languages. The reviews of the day he always found time to read, especially the Edinburgh Review, and kept himself informed of contemporary literature and events occurring in the world he had left. His acquaintance with Greek and Latin literature was extensive, his library containing all the more important works.

Soon after his retirement he engaged in building a residence on his Toplar Forest estate, in Bedford county, near the city of Lynchburg, some seventy miles distant from Monticello. This was a brick building of one story front and, owing to the descending nature of the ground, two in the rear, and was designed as a retreat from the influx of visitors constantly coming and going at Monticello. Here he would sometimes spend several weeks, always accompanied by two or more of his grandchildren, who

enjoyed, as much as he himself did, these excursions and the quiet that followed. Here he enjoyed social intercourse different from that at his more pretentious home. At this place he, to a great degree, escaped the restraints that the concourse imposed upon him. He interested himself in the things that interested his young companions, took long walks and rides, and occasionally accompanied them to the not far distant city, gratifying their youthful tastes in the purchase of small articles at the shops and stores. In his Poplar Forest home he had arranged four book-cases, containing the library he had used in Washington; the volumes selected being compact in form, the whole containing what was almost a complete library of classic, ancient, and modern literature. Life without books would have been an impossibility to a man possessed of his cast of mind. The reading and study of good books were at once his work, his pastime, and his rest. Whatever may have been his religious views, he was a constant and diligent reader of the Bible. By his enemies he was frequently accused of being an atheist. His letters and conversation at various times do not lead to this conclusion, however. In a letter to Dr. Vine Utley, dated at Monticello, March 21, 1819, occurs the following passage: "I never go to bed without an hour or half an hour's previous reading of something moral, whereon to ruminate in the intervals of sleep."

At a date several years earlier he gives more light on the moral reading of this hour previous to retiring. He writes to his revolutionary friend, Charles Thompson, under date January 9, 1816: "I, too, have made a weelittle book from the same materials (referring to the reception by him of Mr. Thompson's Harmony of the Four Gospels), which I call the Philosophy of Jesus; it is a paradigma of his doctrines, made by cutting the texts out of the book, and arranging them on the pages of a blank book, in a certain order of time or subject. A more beautiful or precious morsel of ethics I have never seen; it is a document in proof that I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus, very different from the Platonists, who call me infidel and themselves Christians and preachers of the Gospel, while they draw all their characteristic dogmas from what its author never said, nor saw. They have compounded from the heathen mysteries a system beyond the comprehension of man, of which the great reformer of the vicious ethics and deism of the Jews, were he to return on earth, would not recognize one feature. If I had time, I would add to my little book the Greek, Latin, and French texts, in columns, side by side." It appears that he soon after took time to make the arrangement of texts he proposed, which were placed in a beautiful morocco-bound volume, and labeled on the back, Morals of Jesus. In his collections for the Indians, designed to be incorporated into a text book, unembarrassed by questions beyond their comprehension, he arranged comparative texts from the Gospels in chronological order, from the birth to the death of Christ. It is believed

this presentation of the belief of Mr. Jefferson should forever set at rest the prevalent idea that he was an atheist, or an infidel, in his religious views. The original arrangement of these texts is at the present time in the possession of the descendants of Mr. Jefferson in his own handwriting, unless they have been deposited in a safer place of keeping. Accurate copies may be found in the Appendix to Randall's Life of Jefferson, obtained by the author of that work, from the originals.

Soon after his retirement to Monticello friends, relatives, and acquaintances began their visits, which were sometimes prolonged to days, weeks, months, and frequently to nearly a year's duration. Open-handed hospitality was the rule in Virginia in those days, and to this same free-handed practice, in great measure, were due the financial embarrassments that threw a cloud over the later years of Mr. Jefferson's life. Perhaps the beginning of this trouble should not be ascribed wholly to this cause. For several years unfavorable weather and other causes reduced the quantity of the annual crop to a minimum; the embargo act which he had urged and promoted in the interest of the whole country, bore with greater force on the planters of the Old Dominion than on any other class of people, and prices of all commodities that were produced were ruinously low, while the cost of all articles to be purchased was as extravagantly high. Bountiful crops were gathered during the season of 1812, but the ninety-days embargo and the blockade of the Chesapeake gave no opportunity for exportation, and the produce from which so much was expected was of little value. The crop of wheat was unusually large, but there being no market for it it was fed to stock and otherwise used. At the same time the money market was in a deplorable state, credit was destroyed, and landed property worth next to nothing. The Bank of the United States was chartered in 1816, and the country was soon flooded with its issue of paper. Another era of wild speculation set in. Everything bore fictitious values in the currency of the times. By 1819 and 1820 the climax was reached; no gold or silver was to be had. The only recourse for the bank was to sell the property of its debtors. Nearly all the sales of property were made by officers of the court, and the purchasers were the bank, or creditors who had been hoarding specie. Colonel Benton, in his Thirty Years' View, says there existed "no medium of exchange but depreciated paper; no change even, but little bits of foul paper, marked as so many cents, and signed by some tradesman, barkeeper, or innkeeper; exchange deranged to the extent of fifty or one hundred per cent. Distress the universal cry of the people; relief the universal demand thundered at the doors of all legislatures, state and federal."

The years following the retirement of Mr. Jefferson, to the time of his death, called for retrenchment in all things. To one who had lived almost a lifetime subject to the freehanded custom of Virginians, this was almost an impossibility. The salary provided the President of the United States