the box to you.  It goes to New York in the packet-boat which carries this letter, and will be forwarded to you by water, by Mr. Madison.  Its freight to New York is paid here.  The transportation from thence to Williamsburg, will be demanded of you, and shall stand as the equivalent to the cost of Polybius and Vitruvius, if you please.  The difference either way, will not be worth the trouble of raising and transmitting accounts.  I send you herewith a state of the contents of the box, and for whom each article is.  Among these are some, as you will perceive, of which I ask your acceptance.  It is a great comfort to me, that while here, I am able to furnish some amusement to my friends, by sending them such productions of genius, ancient and modern, as might otherwise escape them; and I hope they will permit me to avail myself of the occasion, while it lasts.

This world is going all to war.  I hope ours will remain clear of it.  It is already declared between the Turks and Russians, and considering the present situation of Holland, it cannot fail to spread itself all over Europe.  Perhaps it may not be till next spring, that the other powers will be engaged in it:  nor is it as yet clear, how they will arrange themselves.  I think it not impossible, that France and the two empires may join against all the rest.  The Patriotic party in Holland will be saved by this, and the Turks sacrificed.  The only thing which can prevent the union of France and the two empires, is the difficulty of agreeing about the partition of the spoils.  Constantinople is the key of Asia.  Who shall have it, is the question.  I cannot help looking forward to the re-establishment of the Greeks as a people, and the language of Homer becoming again a living language, as among possible events.  You have now with you Mr. Paradise, who can tell you how easily the modern may be improved into the ancient Greek.

You ask me in your letter, what ameliorations I think necessary in our federal constitution.  It is now too late to answer the question, and it would always have been presumption in me to have done it.  Your own ideas, and those of the great characters who were to be concerned with you in these discussions, will give the law, as they ought to do, to us all.  My own general idea was, that the States should severally preserve their sovereignty in whatever concerns themselves alone, and that whatever may concern another State, or any foreign nation, should be made a part of the federal sovereignty:  that the exercise of the federal sovereignty should be divided among three several bodies, legislative, executive, and judiciary, as the State sovereignties are:  and that some peaceable means should be contrived, for the federal head to force compliance on the part of the States.  I have reflected on your idea of wooden or ivory diagrams, for the geometrical demonstrations.  I should think wood as good as ivory; and that in this case, it might add to the improvement of the young gentlemen,