Thus useful, and thus respected, passed the old age of Thomas Jefferson.  But time was on its ever-ceaseless wing, and was now bringing the last hour of this illustrious man.  He saw its approach with undisturbed serenity.  He counted the moments as they passed, and beheld that his last sands were falling.  That day, too, was at hand which he had helped to make immortal.  One wish, one hope, if it were not presumptuous, beat in his fainting breast.  Could it be so, might it please God, he would desire once more to see the sun, once more to look abroad on the scene around him, on the great day of liberty.  Heaven, in its mercy, fulfilled that prayer.  He saw that sun, he enjoyed its sacred light, he thanked God for this mercy, and bowed his aged head to the grave.  “Felix, non vitae tantum claritate, sed etiam opportunitate mortis.”

The last public labor of Mr. Jefferson naturally suggests the expression of the high praise which is due, both to him and to Mr. Adams, for their uniform and zealous attachment to learning, and to the cause of general knowledge.  Of the advantages of learning, indeed, and of literary accomplishments, their own characters were striking recommendations and illustrations.  They were scholars, ripe and good scholars; widely acquainted with ancient, as well as modern literature, and not altogether uninstructed in the deeper sciences.  Their acquirements, doubtless, were different, and so were the particular objects of their literary pursuits; as their tastes and characters, in these respects, differed like those of other men.  Being, also, men of busy lives, with great objects requiring action constantly before them, their attainments in letters did not become showy or obtrusive.  Yet I would hazard the opinion, that, if we could now ascertain all the causes which gave them eminence and distinction in the midst of the great men with whom they acted, we should find not among the least their early acquisitions in literature, the resources which it furnished, the promptitude and facility which it communicated, and the wide field it opened for analogy and illustration; giving them thus, on every subject, a larger view and a broader range, as well for discussion as for the government of their own conduct.

Literature sometimes disgusts, and pretension to it much oftener disgusts, by appearing to hang loosely on the character, like something foreign or extraneous, not a part, but an ill-adjusted appendage; or by seeming to overload and weigh it down by its unsightly bulk, like the productions of bad taste in architecture, where there is massy and cumbrous ornament without strength or solidity of column.  This has exposed learning, and especially classical learning, to reproach.  Men have seen that it might exist without mental superiority, without vigor, without good taste, and without utility.  But in such cases classical learning has only not inspired natural talent; or, at most, it has but made original feebleness of intellect, and natural bluntness