intimate friendship of the two Virginians and their long and close association in politics led every one to expect that he would occupy an important post in the new Administration, though in truth that friendship was based on something deeper and finer than mere agreement in politics. "I do believe,” exclaimed a lady who often saw both men in private life, "father never loved son more than Mr. Jefferson loves Mr. Madison." The difference in age, however, was not great, for Jefferson was in his fifty-eighth year and Madison in his fiftieth. It was rather mien and character that suggested the filial relationship. Jefferson was, or could be if he chose, an imposing figure; his stature was six feet two and one-half inches. Madison had the ways and habits of a little man, for he was only five feet six. Madison was naturally timid and retiring in the presence of other men, but he was at his best in the company of his friend Jefferson, who valued his attainments. Indeed, the two men supplemented each other. If Jefferson was prone to theorize, Madison was disposed to find historical evidence to support a political doctrine. While Jefferson generalized boldly, even rashly, Madison hesitated, temporized, weighed the pros and cons, and came with difficulty to a conclusion. Unhappily neither

was a good judge of men. When pitted against a Bonaparte, a Talleyrand, or a Canning, they appeared provincial in their ways and limited in their sympathetic understanding of statesmen of the Old World.

Next to that of Madison, Jefferson valued the friendship of Albert Gallatin, whom he made Secretary of the Treasury by a recess appointment, since there was some reason to fear that the Federalist Senate would not confirm the nomination. The Federalists could never forget that Gallatin was a Swiss by birth-an alien of supposedly radical tendencies. The partisan press never exhibited its crass provincialism more shamefully than when it made fun of Gallatin's imperfect pronunciation of English. He had come to America, indeed, too late to acquire a perfect control of a new tongue, but not too late to become a loyal son of his adopted country. He brought to Jefferson's group of advisers not only a thorough knowledge of public finance but a sound judgment and a statesmanlike vision, which were often needed to rectify the political vagaries of his chief.

The last of his Cabinet appointments made, Jefferson returned to his country seat at Monticello for August and September, for he was determined

66

not to pass those two "bilious months" in Washington. "I have not done it these forty years, he wrote to Gallatin. "Grumble who will, I will never pass those two months on tidewater." To Monticello, indeed, Jefferson turned whenever his duties permitted and not merely in the sickly months of summer, for when the roads were good the journey was rapidly and easily made by stage or chaise. There, in his garden and farm, he found relief from the distractions of public life. "No occupation is so delightful to me," he confessed, 'as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden." At Monticello, too, he could gratify his delight in the natural sciences, for he was a true child of the eighteenth century in his insatiable curiosity about the physical universe and in his desire to reduce that universe to an intelligible mechanism. He was by instinct a rationalist and a foe to superstition in any form, whether in science or religion. His indefatigable pen was as ready to discuss vaccination and yellow fever with Dr. Benjamin Rush as it was to exchange views with Dr. Priestley on the ethics of Jesus.

The diversity of Jefferson's interests is truly remarkable. Monticello is a monument to his

almost Yankee-like ingenuity. He writes to his friend Thomas Paine to assure him that the semicylindrical form of roof after the De Lorme pattern, which he proposes for his house, is entirely practicable, for he himself had "used it at home for a dome, being 120° of an oblong octagon." He was characteristically American in his receptivity to new ideas from any source. A chance item about Eli Whitney of New Haven arrests his attention and forthwith he writes to Madison recommending a "Mr. Whitney at Connecticut, a mechanic of the first order of ingenuity, who invented the cottongin," and who has recently invented "molds and machines for making all the pieces of his [musket] locks so exactly equal that take one hundred locks to pieces and mingle their parts and the hundred locks may be put together as well by taking the first pieces which come to hand." To Robert Fulton, then laboring to perfect his torpedoes and submarine, Jefferson wrote encouragingly: "I have ever looked to the submarine boat as most to be depended on for attaching them [i. e., torpedoes]

. I am in hopes it is not to be abandoned as impracticable."

It was not wholly affectation, therefore, when Jefferson wrote, "Nature intended me for the

my

tranquil pursuits of science, by rendering them supreme delight. But the enormities of the times in which I have lived, have forced me to take a part in resisting them, and to commit myself on the boisterous ocean of political passions." One can readily picture this Virginia farmer-philosopher ruefully closing his study door, taking a last look over the gardens and fields of Monticello, in the golden days of October, and mounting Wildair, his handsome thoroughbred, setting out on the dusty road for that little political world at Washington, where rumor so often got the better of reason and where gossip was so likely to destroy philosophic serenity.

Jefferson had been a widower for many years; and so, since his daughters were married and had households of their own, he was forced to preside over his ménage at Washington without the feminine touch and tact so much needed at this American court. Perhaps it was this unhappy circumstance quite as much as his dislike for ceremonies and formalities that made Jefferson do away with the weekly levees of his predecessors and appoint only two days, the First of January and the Fourth of July, for public receptions. On such occasions