Jefferson's political life. This could not be done without writing the history of the United States for a certain period. We must therefore content ourselves with stating that he continued to fill the secretaryship of state, until the 31st of December, 1793, when he resigned. From that period until February, 1797, he lived in retirement. In this year he was elected vice-president of the United States, and, in 1801, was chosen president by a majority of one vote over his competitor, Mr. Adams. At the expiration of eight years he again retired to private life, from which he never afterwards emerged. The rest of his life was passed at Monticello, which was a continued scene of the blandest and most liberal hospitality. Such, indeed, was the extent to which calls upon it were made, by foreigners as well as Americans, that the closing year of his life was embittered by distressing pecuniary embarrassments. He was forced to ask permission of the Virginia legislature to sell his estate by lottery, which was granted. Shortly after Mr. Jefferson's return to Monticello, it having been proposed to form a college in his neighborhood, he addressed a letter to the trustees, in which he sketched a plan for the establishment of a general system of education in Virginia. This appears to have led the way to an act of the legislature, in the year 1818, by which commissioners were appointed with authority to select a site, and form a plan for a university, on a large scale. Of these commissioners, Mr. Jefferson was unanimously chosen the chairman, and, Aug. 4, 1818, he framed a report, embracing the principles on which it was proposed the institution should be formed. The situation selected for it was at Charlottesville, a town at the foot of the mountain on which Mr. Jefferson resided. He lived to see the university—the child of his old age—in prosperous operation, and giving promise of extensive usefulness. He fulfilled the duties of its rector until a short period before his death, which occurred on the 4th of July, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the declaration of independence, and within the hour in which he had signed it.
In person, Mr. Jefferson was tall and well formed; his countenance was bland and expressive; his conversation fluent, imaginative, various and eloquent. Few men equaled him in the faculty of pleasing in personal intercourse, and acquiring ascendancy in political connection. He was the acknowledged head of the republican party, from the period of its organization down to that of his retirement from public life. The unbounded praise and blame which he received as a politician, must be left for the judgment of the historian and posterity. In the four volumes of his posthumous works, edited by his grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, there are abundant materials to guide the literary or historical critic in forming an estimate of his powers, acquirements, feelings and opinions. His name is one of the brightest in the revolutionary galaxy. Mr. Jefferson was a zealous cultivator of literature and science. As early as 1781, he was favorably known as an author, by his Notes on Virginia. He published, also, various essays on political and philosophical subjects, and a manual of Parliamentary Practice, for the use of the Senate of the United States. In the year 1800 the French national institute chose him one of their foreign members. The volumes of posthumous works, in addition to an auto-biography of the author to the year 1790, consist principally of letters from the year 1775 to the time of his death, and embrace a great variety of subjects.
