this journey.  It is a pleasure you have to come, and an improvement to be added to the many you have already made.  It will be a great comfort to you, to know, from your own inspection, the condition of all the provinces of your own country, and it will be interesting to them at some future day, to be known to you.  This is, perhaps, the only moment of your life in which you can acquire that knowledge.  And to do it most effectually, you must be absolutely incognito, you must ferret the people out of their hovels as I have done, look into their kettles, eat their bread, loll on their beds under pretence of resting yourself, but in fact to find if they are soft.  You will feel a sublime pleasure in the course of this investigation, and a sublimer one hereafter, when you shall be able to apply your knowledge to the softening of their beds, or the throwing a morsel of meat into their kettle of vegetables.

You will not wonder at the subjects of my letter:  they are the only ones which have been presented to my mind for some time past; and the waters must always be what are the fountains from which they flow.  According to this, indeed, I should have intermixed, from beginning to end, warm expressions of friendship to you.  But, according to the ideas of our country, we do not permit ourselves to speak even truths, when they may have the air of flattery.  I content myself, therefore, with saying once for all, that I love you, your wife, and children.  Tell them so, and adieu.

Yours affectionately,

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER LV.—­TO WILLIAM SHORT, April 12, 1787

TO WILLIAM SHORT.

Nice, April 12, 1787,

Dear Sir,

At Marseilles, they told me I should encounter the rice fields of Piedmont soon after crossing the Alps.  Here they tell me there are none nearer than Vercelli and Novara, which is carrying me almost to Milan.  I fear that this circumstance will occasion me a greater delay than I had calculated on.  However, I am embarked in the project, and shall go through with it.  To-morrow, I set out on my passage over the Alps, being to pursue it ninety-three miles to Coni, on mules, as the snows are not yet enough melted to admit carriages to pass.  I leave mine here, therefore, proposing to return by water from Genoa.  I think it will be three weeks before I get back to Nice.  I find this climate quite as delightful as it has been represented.  Hieres is the only place in France, which may be compared with it.  The climates are equal.  In favor of this place, are the circumstances of gay and dissipated society, a handsome city, good accommodations, and some commerce.  In favor of Hieres, are environs of delicious and extensive plains, a society more contracted, and therefore more capable of esteem, and the neighborhood of Toulon, Marseilles, and other places, to which excursions may be made.  Placing Marseilles in comparison with Hieres, it has