Unaccustomed to reserve or mystery in the expression of my opinions, I have opened myself frankly on a question suggested by your letter and present.  And although I have not the honor of your acquaintance, this mark of attention, and still more the sentiments of esteem so kindly expressed in your letter, are entitled to a confidence that observations not intended for the public will not be ushered to their notice, as has happened to me sometimes.  Tranquillity, at my age, is the balm of life.  While I know I am safe in the honor and charity of a McLeod, I do not wish to be cast forth to the Marats, the Dantons, and the Robespierres of the priesthood:  I mean the Parishes, the Osgoods, and the Gardiners of Massachusetts.

I pray you to accept the assurances of my esteem and respect.

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CXXIII.—­TO CAESAR A. RODNEY, March 16, 1815

TO CAESAR A. RODNEY.

Monticello, March 16, 1815.

My Dear Friend and Ancient Colleague,

Your letter of February the 19th has been received with very sincere pleasure.  It recalls to memory the sociability, the friendship, and the harmony of action which united personal happiness with public duties, during the portion of our lives in which we acted together.  Indeed, the affectionate harmony of our cabinet is among the sweetest of my recollections.  I have just received a letter of friendship from General Dearborn.  He writes me that he is now retiring from every species of public occupation, to pass the remainder of life as a private citizen; and he promises me a visit in the course of the summer.  As you hold out a hope of the same gratification, if chance or purpose could time your visits together, it would make a real jubilee.  But come as you will, or as you can, it will always be joy enough to me.  Only you must give me a month’s notice; because I go three or four times a year to a possession ninety miles southwestward, and am absent a month at a time, and the mortification would be indelible of losing such a visit by a mistimed absence.  You will find me in habitual good health, great contentedness, enfeebled in body, impaired in memory, but without decay in my friendships.

Great, indeed, have been the revolutions in the world, since you and I have had any thing to do with it.  To me they have been like the howlings of the winter storm over the battlements, while warm in my bed.  The unprincipled tyrant of the land is fallen, his power reduced to its original nothingness, his person only not yet in the mad-house, where it ought always to have been.  His equally unprincipled competitor, the tyrant of the ocean, in the mad-house indeed, in person, but his power still stalking over the deep. ’Quem deus vult perdere, prius dementat.’  The madness is acknowledged; the perdition of course impending.  Are we to be the instruments?  A friendly, a just, and a reasonable conduct on their