5.  Travelling.  This makes men wiser, but less happy.  When men of sober age travel, they gather knowledge, which they may apply usefully for their country; but they are subject ever after to recollections mixed with regret; their affections are weakened by being extended over more objects; and they learn new habits, which cannot be gratified when they return home.  Young men who travel are exposed to all these inconveniences in a higher degree, to others still more serious, and do not acquire that wisdom for which a previous foundation is requisite, by repeated and just observations at home.  The glare of pomp and pleasure is analogous to the motion of the blood; it absorbs all their affection and attention; they are torn from it as from the only good in this world, and return to their home as to a place of exile and condemnation.  Their eyes are for ever turned back to the object they have lost, and its recollection poisons the residue of their lives.  Their first and most delicate passions are hackneyed on unworthy objects here, and they carry home the dregs, insufficient to make themselves or any body else happy.  Add to this, that a habit of idleness, an inability to apply themselves to business is acquired, and renders them useless to themselves and their country.  These observations are founded in experience.  There is no place where your pursuit of knowledge will be so little obstructed by foreign objects, as in your own country, nor any wherein the virtues of the heart will be less exposed to be weakened.  Be good, be learned, and be industrious, and you will not want the aid of travelling, to render you precious to your country, dear to your friends, happy within yourself.  I repeat my advice, to take a great deal of exercise, and on foot.  Health is the first requisite after morality.  Write to me often, and be assured of the interest I take in your success, as well as the warmth of those sentiments of attachment with which I am, Dear Peter, your affectionate friend,

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER LXXXV.—­TO DR. GILMER, August 11, 1787

TO DR. GILMER.

Paris, August 11, 1787.

Dear Doctor,

Your letter of January the 9th, 1787, came safely to hand in the month of June last.  Unluckily you forgot to sign it, and your hand-writing is so Protean, that one cannot be sure it is yours.  To increase the causes of incertitude, it was dated Pen-Park, a name which I only know, as the seat of John Harmer.  The hand-writing, too, being somewhat in his style, made me ascribe it hastily to him, indorse it with his name, and let it lie in my bundle to be answered at leisure.  That moment of leisure arriving, I sat down to answer it to John Harmer, and now, for the first time, discover marks of its being yours, and particularly those expressions of friendship to myself and family, which you have ever been so good as to entertain, and which are to me among the most precious possessions.  I wish my sense of this, and my desires of seeing you rich and happy, may not prevent my seeing any difficulty in the case you state of George Harmer’s wills; which, as you state them, are thus.