THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Do great epochs make great men, or do great men make great epochs? This question has often been discussed; and the consideration of every important era is likely to start it afresh. Neither question is true to the exclusion of the other. Great epochs and great men go together, each exerting an influence upon the other. In a nation, as in an individual, there is usually a large amount of ability unutilized. Under ordinary conditions it lies latent. When there comes that conflict of ideas, and often of physical force, which marks a new stage in human progress, the latent energies of the people are roused to action: great men rise to meet the responsibilities and to seize the opportunities presented to them. They often succeed in directing or controlling the new movement, and out of chaos they bring forth order and beauty.

Among the great men developed and brought into prominence by the conflict with Great Britain, a very high place must be assigned to Thomas Jefferson. After Washington, whom a grateful country has invested with an almost ideal beauty, he must be ranked with Adams, Franklin, and Hamilton, as one of the founders of our republic. Among the many distinguished sons whom Virginia has given to America, Jefferson stands very close after "the father of his country." His labors in the Legislature of Virginia, in the Continental Congress, and afterwards in the president's chair, displayed the wisdom and the patriotism of a great statesman.

Thomas Jefferson was born in Albemarle County, April 2, 1743. His father, who was of Welsh descent, was a man of no great learning, but of excellent judgment and great physical strength. His mother, who was a Randolph, belonged to

one of the most distinguished Virginia families. The Randolphs traced their pedigree to noble families in England and Scotland a fact "to which," says Jefferson in his "Autobiography," "let every one ascribe the faith and merit he chooses." Considering the mental and physical traits of his father and mother, we see that Jefferson was fortunate in his parentage.

After an excellent preparatory training, including English, French, Latin, and Greek, Jefferson entered William and Mary College, which was generally patronized at that time by the aristocratic families of Virginia. He was a diligent student, often working, as he tells us, fifteen hours a day. He united a decided taste for both mathematics and the classics. He had little taste for fiction, and it is said that "Don Quixote is the only novel he ever keenly relished or read a second time. He delighted in poetry, and read Homer, Horace, Tasso, Molière, Shakespeare, Milton, and Pope. For a time he was extravagantly fond of Ossian, and “. was not ashamed to own that he thought this rude bard of the North the greatest poet that had ever existed." But many years before his death he formed a juster estimate of Macpherson's forgeries. He took no interest in metaphysical studies, and frequently expressed "unmitigated contempt for Plato and his writings.

While in Williamsburg, at that time the capital of the State, Jefferson became a law student under George Wythe, one of the ablest and purest lawyers Virginia has produced. He won the favor of Governor Fauquier, at whose table he was a frequent guest. "With him," Jefferson writes, "Dr. Small and Mr. Wythe, his amici omnium horarum, and myself formed a partie quarrée, and to the habitual conversations on these occasions I owed much instruction." This intimate fellowship with learned and distinguished men while he was yet scarcely out of his teens, indicates the presence of no ordinary intellectual and social gifts.

In 1767, at the age of twenty-four, Jefferson entered upon the practice of law. His preparation had been thorough, and

he was eminently successful from the start. Though he was not, like his friend Patrick Henry, an eloquent speaker, he was a man of excellent judgment and untiring industry. While capable of seizing at once upon the strong points of a case, he had a genius for details. Nothing can surpass the minuteness of his observations, and the patience of his methodical classification. He was rapidly advancing to a prominent place among the ablest lawyers of Virginia, when the struggle with Great Britain called him to a wider and more important field of action.

In 1769 Jefferson was elected a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses for his native county. The aristocratic class, to which he belonged by birth and association, was generally conservative. They were loyal to the English crown and to the English church. It speaks forcibly for Jefferson's patriotism and for his noble independence of character, that he threw off his inherited prejudices and sided with the colonies. At this meeting of the House of Burgesses resolutions were passed boldly declaring that the right of levying taxes in Virginia belonged to themselves; that they possessed the privilege of petitioning the king for a redress of grievances; and that the transportation to England of persons accused of treason in the colonies, in order to be tried there, was unconstitutional and unjust. In advocating these resclutions, Jefferson took a decided and prominent part.

In 1772 Jefferson married Mrs. Martha Skelton, a young widow of great attractions in person, mind, and estate. She was of frank, warm-hearted disposition; and “last, not least, she had already proved herself a true daughter of the Old Dominion in the department of house-wifery." She added to her husband's estate, which was already very large, about forty thousand acres of land and one hundred and thirty-five slaves. Thus they were unembarrassed by those disagreeable domestic economies that sometimes interfere with wedded bliss; and Monticello became as noted for bounteous hospitality as for domestic felicity.