HABITS OF LIVING. .—“ Your letter came to hand on the 1st instant; and the request of the history of my physical habits would have puzzled me not a little, had it not been for the model with which you accompanied it, of Doctor Rush's answer to a similar inquiry. I live so much like other people, that I might refer to ordinary life as the history of my own. Like my friend the Doctor, I have lived temperately, eating little animal food, and that not as an aliment, so much as a condiment for the vegetables, which constitute my principal diet. I double, however, the Doctor's glass and a half of wine, and even treble it with a friend; but halve its ef fect by drinking the weak wines only. The ardent wines I cannot drink, nor do I use ardent spirits in any form. Malt liquors and cider are my table drinks, and my breakfast, like that also of my friend, is of tea and coffee. I have been blest with organs of digestion, which accept and concoct, without ever murmuring, whatever the palate chooses to consign to them, and I have not yet lost a tooth by age. I was a hard student until I entered on the business of life, the duties of which leave no idle time to those disposed to fulfil them; and now, retired, and at the age of seventysix, I am again a hard student. Indeed my fondess for reading and study revolts me from the drudgery of letter-writing. And a stiff wrist, the consequence of an early dislocation, makes writing both slow and painful. I am not so regular in my sleep as the Doctor says he was, devoting to it from five to eight hours, according as my company or the book I am reading interests me; and I never go to bed without an hour, or a half hour's previous reading of something moral, whereon to ruminate in the intervals of sleep. But whether I retire to bed early or late, I rise with the sun. I use spectacles at night, but not necessarily in the day, unless in reading small print. My hearing is distinct in particular conversation, but confused when several voices cross each other, which unfits me for the society of the table. I have been more fortunate than my friend in the article of health. So free from catarrhs that I have not had one (in the breast, I mean) on an average of eight or ten years through life. I ascribe this exemption partly to the habit of bathing my feet in cold water every morning for sixty years past. A fever of more than twenty-four hours I have not had above two or three times in my life. A periodical headache. has afflicted me occasionally, once, perhaps, in six or eight years, for two or three weeks at a time, which seems now to have left me; and, except on a late occasion of indisposition, I enjoy good health; too feeble, indeed, to walk much, but riding without fatigue six or eight miles a day, and sometimes thirty or forty. I may end these egotisms, therefore, as I began, by saying that my life has been so much like that of other people, that I might say with Horace, to every one, 'Nomine mutato, narratur fabula de

te.

The limits to which we are confined, are a warning against an extension of the interesting catalogue, or it might be pursued indefinitely, and with unvarying gratification. The cabinet of the illustrious recluse, besides exhibiting a faithful portrait of himself, contains the sublimated wisdom of a long life of wonderful experience and opportunities, accumulated by a mind eminently original and contemplative; and opens an inexhaustible store of materials for the Historian, the Philosopher, the Moralist, Patriot, Philanthropist, and Statesman. His course of life, while in retirement, was filled with untiring activity, and unrestrainedly indulged in those occupations, which were the master passions of every portion of it, reading, science, correspondence, the cultivation of his farm, the endearments of family, and delights of social intercourse. He carried into his retirement the same neatness and severity of system, which had enabled him to surmount with ease the greatest complication of duties in public life. He rose with the sun. From that time to breakfast, and often until noon, he was in his cabinet, chiefly employed in epistolary correspondence. From breakfast, or noon at latest, to dinner, he was engaged in his work-shops, his garden, or on horseback, among his farms. From dinner to dark, he gave to society and recreation with his neighbors and friends; and from candle-light to bed-time, he devoted himself to reading and study. Gradually, as he grew older, he became seized with a canine appetite for reading, as he termed it, and he indulged it freely, as promising a relief against the tedium senectutis, a 'lamp to lighten his path through the dreary wilderness of time before him, whose bourne he saw not.' His reading was of the most substantial kind, chiefly historical and classical; his studies, philosophical and mathematical. Thucidides, Tacitus, Horace, Newton, and Euclid, were his constant companions. When young, mathematics was the passion of his life. The same passion returned upon him, in his old age, but probably with unequal powers. Processes, he complained, which he could then read off with the facility of common discourse, now cost him labor and time, and slow investigation.' Yet no one but himself was sensible of any decay in his intellectual energies. He possessed an uncommon health, with a constitutional buoyancy unbroken, and improved by the salubrity of his mountain residence; and his strength, which was yielding under the weight of years, was considerably re-inforced by the activity of the

the course he pursued. "I talk of ploughs and harrows," he wrote to a friend," of seeding and harvesting, with my neighbors, and of politics too, if they choose, with as little reserve as the rest of my fellow citizens, and feel, at length, the blessing of being free to say and do what I please, without being responsible for it to any mortal." A part of his occupation, and one in which he took great delight, was the direction of the studies of young men ; multitudes of whom resorted to him, as to an Oracle, to imbibe the inspirations of his councils, and listen to the incantations of his genius. They located themselves in the neighboring village of Charlottesville, where they were invited to a free access to his library, enjoyed the benefit of his counsel, participated of his cordial hospitality, and made an interesting part of his daily society. "In advising the course of their reading" said he, "I endeavor to keep their attention fixed on the main objects of all science, the freedom and happiness of man. So that coming to bear a share in the councils and government of their country, they will keep ever in view the sole objects of all legitimate government."

The agricultural operations of Mr. Jefferson were conducted upon an extensive scale, and consequently engaged a great share of his attention, by no means the least pleasantly. The domains at Monticello, including the adjoining estates, contained about eleven thou sand acres, of which about fifteen hundred were cleared. In addition to this, he owned a large estate in Bedford county, by right of his wife, from which he raised annually about 40,000 weight of tobacco, and grain sufficient to maintain the plantation. He visited this estate, about seventy miles distant, once every year, which kept him from home six or seven weeks at a time. He had about two hundred negroes on his farms, who required a constant superintendance; more especially, under the peculiar system of agriculture pursued by Mr. Jefferson, of which some notice has heretofore been taken. But his choicest labors, in this department, were bestowed on that delightful and beloved spot, where all his labors were to end, as they had been begun. He had reclaimed its awful ruggedness, when a very young man, and of its wilderness made a garden; and now, in his old age, he returned, with all the enthusiasm of his early efforts, to the further development and improvement of the natural beauties of a site, whose bold and gigantic features, whose far-reaching prospects, whose tranquil and immovable brow

amidst the agitations of the storm below, were eminently in unison with the elements of his character. A more particular description of this celebrated seat may not be unedifying to the majority of read

ers.

MONTICELLO is derived from the Italian, and announces the owner's attachment, at once, to that beautiful language, and to the fine arts, of which Italy is both the cradle, and the favorite abode. It signifies 'little mountain,'-modest title for a bold and isolated eminence, which rises six hundred feet above the surrounding country, and commands one of the most extensive and variegated prospects in the world. The base of the nountain, which is washed by the Ravanna, exceeds a mile in diameter; and its sides are encompassed by four parallel roads, sweeping round it at equal distances, and so connected with each other by easy ascents, as to afford, when completed, a level carriage-way of almost seven miles. The whole mountain, with the exception of the summit, is covered with a dense and lofty forest. On the top is an elliptic plain, of about ten acres, formed by the hand of art cutting down the apex of the mountain; and, in its richly cultivated aspect, contrasting powerfully with the unreclaimed and wild magnificence of the subjacent world. This extensive artificial level is laid out in a beautiful lawn, broken only by lofty weeping willows, poplars, acacias, catalpas and other trees of foreign growth, distributed at such distances, as not to obstruct the view from the centre in any direction. On the West, stretching away to the North and the South, the prospect is bounded only by the Alleganies,—a hundred miles distant in some parts,-overreaching all the intervening mountains, commanding a view of the Blue Ridge for a hundred and fifty miles, and looking down upon an enchanting landscape, broad as the eye can compass, of intermingling villages and deserts, forest and cultivation, mountains, vallies, rocks and rivers. On the East is a literal immensity of prospect, bounded only by the rotundity of the Earth, in which nature seems to sleep in eternal repose, as if to form one of her finest contrasts with the rude and rolling grandeur on the West.' From this grand point, bringing under the eye a most magnificent panorama, are overlooked, like pigmies, all the neighboring mountains as far as the Chesapeake; and the Atlantic itself might be seen were it not for the greatness of the distance. Hence it was, that the youthful philosopher, before the Revolution, was wont to scrutinize the motions of