In your favor of the 8th instant, you mentioned that you had written to me in February last.  This letter never came to hand.  That of April the 24th came here during my absence on a journey through Holland and Germany; and my having been obliged to devote the first moments after my return to some very pressing matters, must be my apology for not having been able to write to you till now.  As soon as I knew that it would be agreeable to you to have such a disposal of your work for translation, as I had made for Dr. Ramsay, I applied to the same bookseller with propositions on your behalf.  He told me, that he had lost so much by that work, that he could hardly think of undertaking another, and, at any rate, not without first seeing and examining it.  As he was the only bookseller I could induce to give any thing on the former occasion, I went to no other with my proposal, meaning to ask you to send me immediately as much of the work as is printed.  This you can do by the Diligence, which comes three times a week from London to Paris.  Furnished with this, I will renew my proposition, and do the best for you I can; though I fear that the ill success of the translation of Dr. Ramsay’s work, and of another work on the subject of America, will permit less to be done for you than I had hoped.  I think Dr. Ramsay failed from the inelegance of the translation, and the translator’s having departed entirely from the Doctor’s instructions.  I will be obliged to you, to set me down as subscriber for half a dozen copies, and to ask Mr. Trumbull (No. 2, North street, Rathbone Place) to pay you the whole subscription price for me, which he will do on showing him this letter.  These copies can be sent by the Diligence.  I have not yet received the pictures Mr. Trumbull was to send me, nor consequently that of M. de la Fayette.  I will take care of it when it arrives.  His title is simply, Le Marquis de la Fayette.

You ask, in your letter of April the 24th, details of my sufferings by Colonel Tarleton.  I did not suffer by him.  On the contrary, he behaved very genteelly with me.  On his approach to Charlottesville, which is within three miles of my house at Monticello, he despatched a troop of his horse, under Captain McLeod, with the double object of taking me prisoner, with the two Speakers of the Senate and Delegates, who then lodged with me, and of remaining there in vidette, my house commanding a view often or twelve miles round about.  He gave strict orders to Captain McLeod to suffer nothing to be injured.  The troop failed in one of their objects, as we had notice of their coming, so that the two Speakers had gone off about two hours before their arrival at Monticello, and myself, with my family, about five minutes.  But Captain McLeod preserved every thing with sacred care, during about eighteen hours that he remained there.  Colonel Tarleton was just so long at Charlottesville, being hurried from thence by the news of the rising