information and with matter for reflection, can never know ennui.  Besides, there will always be work enough cut out for him to continue his active usefulness to his country.  For example, he and Monroe (the President) are now here on the work of a collegiate institution to be established in our neighborhood, of which they and myself are three of six Visitors.  This, if it succeeds, will raise up children for Mr. Madison to employ his attention through life.  I say, if it succeeds; for we have two very essential wants in our way:  1. means to compass our views; and 2. men qualified to fulfil them.  And these you will agree are essential wants indeed.

I am glad to find you have a copy of Sismondi, because his is a field familiar to you, and on which you can judge him.  His work is highly praised, but I have not yet read it.  I have been occupied and delighted with reading another work, the title of which did not promise much useful information or amusement, ’L’Italia avanti il Dominio del Romani, dal Micali.  It has often, you know, been a subject of regret that Carthage had no writer to give her side of her own history, while her wealth, power, and splendor prove she must have had a very distinguished policy and government.  Micali has given the counterpart of the Roman history, for the nations over which they extended their dominion.  For this he has gleaned up matter from every quarter, and furnished materials for reflection and digestion to those who, thinking as they read, have perceived that there was a great deal of matter behind the curtain, could that be fully withdrawn.  He certainly gives new views of a nation whose splendor has masked and palliated their barbarous ambition.  I am now reading Botta’s History of our own Revolution.  Bating the ancient practice which he has adopted, of putting speeches into mouths which never made them, and fancying motives of action which we never felt, he has given that history with more detail, precision, and candor, than any writer I have yet met with.  It is, to be sure, compiled from those writers; but it is a good secretion of their matter, the pure from the impure, and presented in a just sense of right, in opposition to usurpation.

Accept assurances for Mrs. Adams and yourself of my affectionate esteem and respect.

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CXLI.—­TO MARQUIS DE LA FAYETTE, May 14, 1817

TO MARQUIS DE LA FAYETTE.

Monticello, May 14, 1817.

Although, Dear Sir, much retired from the world, and meddling little in its concerns, yet I think it almost a religious duty to salute at times my old friends, were it only to say and to know that ‘all’s well.’  Our hobby has been politics; but all here is so quiet, and with you so desperate, that little matter is furnished us for active attention.  With you too, it has long been forbidden ground, and therefore imprudent for a foreign friend to tread,