how, at a later day, when, on the eve of the conclusion
of the war in Europe, it was resolved to commence
hostilities with England, he sought to postpone the
struggle for a season, convinced that a short delay
would render it unnecessary, and how signally his
foresight was justified by the result; thus recommending,
in opposition to the pervading sentiment of the State,
a policy which would have saved thousands of valuable
lives, and a hundred millions of money, expended in
our contest with England; how, at a still later day,
when the Senate of the United States, unconsciously
and needlessly, were about to involve us in a war
with Spain, his eloquence rescued the country from
the impending danger; yet, when war was declared against
his will, ever ready to unite with his countrymen in
prosecuting hostilities with the greatest vigor; how,
alone among all the departed statesmen of Virginia,
he managed, with the industry and attention of an
ordinary citizen, his private affairs, into which he
introduced a system which the planter and the merchant
might wisely imitate, and which enabled him to compete
with his most skilful contemporaries in the success
which followed all his exertions; how, unseduced by
a love of gold in an age of speculation, he never committed
a dollar to the caprices of fortune, or lost an investment;
how, though affluent with wealth, won mainly by downright
industry, and waxing greater every hour by the force
of that wondrous element in the accumulation of money,
a lengthened lapse of years, he constantly and steadily
turned his back upon the extravagance and social follies
of the day, and exhibited in his household and in
his life those stern and sterling virtues of prudence,
economy, and thrift, which were the characteristics
of the early fathers of the republic; displaying before
the eyes of the people a model wherein the loftiest
genius, the most varied and profound learning, the
most fervid patriotism ever sinking self in country,
the severe simplicity and frugality which should ever
shine along the track of a true republican statesman,
and an escutcheon undebased by a solitary vice, were
united in all their fair and grand proportions; how,
in his happy home, he dispensed, freely and without
price, the marvellous stores of learning and experience
which he had amassed during his long and eventful
career, turning his modest study into a chamber of
philosophy, and the well-spring of oracles more practical,
more prudent, more profound, and penetrating further
into the abyss of the dark and illimitable future
than were ever uttered at the Pythian fane; and last,
though not least, how, in the lingering twilight of
his years as in their earliest dawn, he loved Virginia,
not with that cold feeling which looks to latitude
and longitude, to East or to West, as the limits of
affection, but, first, in that tender and household
light, as the home of his ancestry, the sepulchre of
his sires, his own birth and burial-place, and the
birth and burial-place of those who were dear to him,