Mr. Jefferson was inaugurated President a second time on the 4th of March, 1805, then in the sixty-second year of his age. The following winter, his only daughter, with all her children, passed most of the season at the White House. She never made but two visits there; one with her sister, the second year of his first term, and this last one in the winter of 1805-6, after her sister's death. Means of travel were not so rapid or pleasant as now, and the laborious and extremely tedious undertaking of travelling so far in a carriage was sufficient to dampen the desire of living for a few alternate months with her father. The unhealthy condition of Washington at that time, its low and marshy condition, engendering disease, rendered it absolutely necessary for those unacclimated to be out of its limits during the hot months of summer. The increasing cares of children and the duties of Virginia matrons, also deterred Mrs. Randolph from becoming, as we must only regret she did not, permanently located in the President's House.

Her memory is so fragrant with the perfume of purity and saintly sweetness, that it is a privilege to dwell and muse upon a theme so elevating. The world has not yet developed a more harmonious, refined, or superior type of womanhood than the daughters of Virginia in the last century. Reared in ease and plenty, taught the virtues that ennoble, and valuing their good name no less than prizing their family lineage, they were the most delightful specimens of womanhood ever extant. Most particularly was Martha Jefferson of this class, whose image is fast losing

originality in the modern system of utilitarian education. Her father's and her husband's great enemy pronounced her "the sweetest woman in Virginia ;" and the assurance comes laden with the testimony of many tongues, that her existence was one of genial sunshine and peace. Are not such natures doubly blessed, first, in the happiness they secure to themselves, and, secondly, in the blessing they are to those who walk in the light of their example? With the retirement of Mr. Jefferson from public life, came a new trouble in the shape of innumerable visitors, and the seventeen years he lived at Monticello was one continued scene of new faces and old friends. Even after the loss of property and accumulated debts, he was compelled to entertain thoughtless crowds who made pilgrimages to his shrine. Time and again he would go to an adjoining estate to secure that rest and quiet so essential to his health; but these visits were never of long duration, for he could not consent to be separated from his daughter, even though accompanied by his grandchildren. As the shadows began to darken round his earth-life, and bankruptcy to hover over him, he turned with redoubled affection to this idol, and she was strong and faithful to the last. Mother and sister she had buried, and she was yet strong enough to see her husband and father taken.

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"There were few eminent men of our country, except, perhaps, some political adversaries, who did not visit Mr. Jefferson in his retirement, to say nothing of distinguished foreigners." But all visitors were not as agreeable as "eminent men." "There are a number

of persons now living who have seen groups of utter strangers, of both sexes, planted in the passage between his study and dining-room, consulting their watches, and waiting for him to pass from one to the other to his dinner, so that they could momentarily stare at him. A female once punched through a window-pane of the house, with her parasol, to get a better view of him. When sitting in the shade of his porticoes to enjoy the coolness of the approaching evening, parties of men and women would sometimes approach within a dozen yards, and gaze at him pointblank until they had looked their fill, as they would have gazed on a lion in a menagerie."

Mrs. Randolph was "the apple of her father's eye." All his letters bear witness to his affection, and all his life records this prominent sentiment of his heart. A gentleman writing to him for his views on a proper course of education for woman, he takes the opportunity of complimenting her unconsciously. “A plan of female education," he says, "has never been a subject of systematic contemplation with me. It has occupied my attention so far only as the education of my own daughters occasionally required. Considering that they would be placed in a country situation where little aid could be obtained from abroad, I thought it essential to give them a solid education, which might enable them-when become mothers-to educate their own daughters, and even to direct the course for sons, should their fathers be lost, or incapable, or inattentive.

"My surviving daughter accordingly, the mother

of many daughters as well as sons, has made their education the object of her life, and being a better judge of the practical part than myself, it is with her aid and that of one of her élèves, that I shall subjoin a catalogue of the books for such a course of reading as we have practised."

Again, in a letter to his grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, he says:

"You kindly encourage me to keep up my spirits; but oppressed with disease, debility, age, and embarrassed affairs, this is difficult. For myself, I should not regard a prostration of fortune; but I am overwhelmed at the prospect of the situation in which I may leave my family. My dear and beloved daughter, the cherished companion of my early life, and nurse of my age, and her children, rendered as dear to me as if my own, from having lived with me from their cradle, left in a comfortless situation, hold up to me nothing but future gloom; and I should not care were life to end with the line I am writing, were it not that in the unhappy state of mind which your father's misfortunes have brought upon him, I may yet be of some avail to the family."

Ex-President Jefferson died the 4th of July, 1826, and at nearly the same hour passed away the spirit of John Adams. He lingered a little behind Jefferson, and his last words, uttered in the failing articulation of the dying, were: "Jefferson still survives." Randolph left no written account of the scene. the 2d of July, Mr. Jefferson handed her a little casket. On opening it, after his death, she found a paper

Mrs.

On

on which he had written the lines of Moore, commenc

ing:

"It is not the tear at this moment shed

When the cold turf has just been lain o'er him "

There is also a touching tribute to his daughter, declaring that while he "goes to his fathers," "the last pang of life," is in parting from her; that "two seraphs" "long shrouded in death" (meaning doubtless his wife and younger daughter) "await him;" that he will "bear them her love."

After this, all is sadness. To satisfy creditors all the property was sold, and the proceeds did not fully meet the debts.

"When it became known that Monticello had gone, or must go out of the hands of Mr. Jefferson's family, and that his only child was left without an independent provision, another exhibition of public feeling took place. The Legislatures of South Carolina and Louisiana promptly voted her $10,000 each, and the stocks they created for the purpose sold for $21,800. Other plans were started in other States, which, had they been carried out, would have embraced a liberal provision for Mr. Jefferson's descendants. But, as is usual on such occasions, the people in each locality obtained exaggerated impressions of what was doing in others, and slackened their own exertions until the feeling that prompted them died away."

Two years passed, and Mrs. Randolph was called upon to see her husband die, and she of all her name remained to link the memory of her ancestors with those of her descendants.