I take the liberty of putting under your cover a letter to the son of the Marquis de la Fayette, not exactly knowing where to direct to him.

With very affectionate compliments to Mrs. Washington, I have the honor to be, with great and sincere esteem and respect, Dear Sir, your most obedient and most humble servant,

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CXCVII.—­TO M. DE LA FAYETTE, June 19, 1796

TO M. DE LA FAYETTE.

Monticello, June 19, 1796.

Dear Sir,

The inquiries of Congress were the first intimation which reached my retirement of your being in this country, and from M. Volney, now with me, I first learned where you are.  I avail myself of the earliest moments of this information, to express to you the satisfaction with which I learn that you are in the land of safety, where you will meet in every person the friend of your worthy father and family.  Among these I beg leave to mingle my own assurances of sincere attachment to him, and my desire to prove it by every service I can render you.  I know, indeed, that you are already under too good a patronage to need any other, and that my distance and retirement render my affections unavailing to you.  They exist, nevertheless, in all their purity and warmth towards your father and every one embraced by his love; and no one has wished with more anxiety to see him once more in the bosom of a nation, who, knowing his works and his worth, desire to make him and his family for ever their own.  You were, perhaps, too young to remember me personally when in Paris.  But I pray you to remember, that should any occasion offer wherein I can be useful to you, there is no one on whose friendship and zeal you may more confidently count.  You will, some day perhaps, take a tour through these States.  Should any thing in this part of them attract your curiosity, it would be a circumstance of great gratification to me to receive you here, and to assure you in person of those sentiments of esteem, and attachment with which I am, Dear Sir, your friend and humble servant,

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CXCVIII.—­TO JONATHAN WILLIAMS, July 3,1796

TO JONATHAN WILLIAMS.

Monticello, July 3,1796.

Dear Sir,

I take shame to myself for having so long left unanswered your valuable favor on the subject of the mountains.  But in truth, I am become lazy as to every thing except agriculture.  The preparations for harvest, and the length of the harvest itself, which is not yet finished, would have excused the delay however, at all times and under all dispositions.  I examined, with great satisfaction, your barometrical estimate of the heights of our mountains; and with the more, as they corroborated conjectures on this subject which I had made before.  My estimates had made them a little higher than yours (I speak of the Blue Ridge.)