One of his granddaughters thus writes of him:  “I cannot describe the feelings of veneration, admiration, and love that existed in my heart for him.  I looked upon him as a being too great and good for my comprehension.  I never heard him utter a harsh word to any one of us.  On winter evenings, as we all sat round the fire, he taught us games, and would play them with us.  He reproved without wounding us, and commended without making us vain.  His nature was so eminently sympathetic that with those he loved he could enter into their feelings, anticipate their wishes, gratify their tastes, and surround them with an atmosphere of affection.”

Thus did he live in his plain but beautiful house, in sight of the Blue Ridge, with Charlottesville and the university at his feet.  He rode daily for ten miles until he was eighty-two.  He died July 4, 1826, full of honors, and everywhere funeral orations were delivered to his memory, the best of which was by Daniel Webster in Boston.

Among his papers was found the inscription which he wished to have engraved on his tomb:  “Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia.”  He does not allude to his honors or his offices,—­not a word about his diplomatic career, or of his stations as governor of Virginia, Secretary of State, or President of the United States.  But the three things he does name enshrine the best convictions of his life and the substance of his labors in behalf of his country,—­political independence, religious freedom, and popular education.

The fame of Jefferson as author of the Declaration of Independence is more than supported by his writings at different times which bear on American freedom and the rights of man.  It is as a writer on political liberty that he is most distinguished.  He was not an orator or speech-maker.  He worked in his library among his books, meditating on the great principles which he enforced with so much lucidity and power.  It was for his skill with the pen that he was selected to draft the immortal charter of American freedom, which endeared him to the hearts of the people, and which no doubt contributed largely to cement the States together in their resistance to Great Britain.

His reference to the statute of Virginia in favor of religious freedom illustrates another of his leading sentiments, to which he clung with undeviating tenacity during his whole career.  He may have been a freethinker like Franklin, but he did not make war on the religious beliefs of mankind; he only desired that everybody should be free to adopt such religious principles as were dear to him, without hindrance or molestation.  He was before his age in liberality of mind, and he ought not to be stigmatized as an infidel for his wise toleration.  Although his views were far from orthodox, they did not, after all, greatly differ