turn my thoughts to commentaries.  A consciousness of a defective education and a certainty of a want of time unfit me for such an undertaking.”  He was misled by his own modesty as to his capacity, but his strong feeling as to his lack of schooling haunted and troubled him always, although it did not make him either indifferent or bitter.  He only admired more that which he himself had missed.  He regarded education, and especially the higher forms, with an almost pathetic reverence, and its advancement was never absent from his thoughts.  When he was made chancellor of the college of William and Mary, he was more deeply pleased than by any honor ever conferred upon him, and he accepted the position with a diffidence and a seriousness which were touching in such a man.  In the same spirit he gave money to the Alexandria Academy, and every scheme to promote public education in Virginia had his eager support.  His interest was not confined by state lines, for there was nothing so near his heart as the foundation of a national university.  He urged its establishment upon Congress over and over again, and, as has been seen, left money in his will for its endowment.

All his sympathies and tastes were those of a man of refined mind, and of a lover of scholarship and sound learning.  Naturally a very modest man, and utterly devoid of any pretense, he underrated, as a matter of fact, his own accomplishments.  He distrusted himself so much that he always turned to Hamilton, both during the Revolution and afterwards, as well as in the preparation of the farewell address, to aid him in clothing his thoughts in a proper dress, which he felt himself unable to give them.  His tendency was to be too diffuse and too involved, but as a rule his style was sufficiently clear, and he could express himself with nervous force when the occasion demanded, and with a genuine and stately eloquence when he was deeply moved, as in the farewell to Congress at the close of the war.  It is not a little remarkable that in his letters after the first years there is nothing to betray any lack of early training.  They are the letters, not of a scholar or a literary man, but of an educated gentleman; and although he seldom indulged in similes or allusions, when he did so they were apt and correct.  This was due to his perfect sanity of mind, and to his aversion to all display or to any attempt to shine in borrowed plumage.  He never undertook to speak or write on any subject, or to make any reference, which he did not understand.  He was a lover of books, collected a library, and read always as much as his crowded life would permit.  When he was at Newburgh, at the close of the war, he wrote to Colonel Smith in New York to send him the following books:—­