to the generation now in place.  They are wiser than we were, and their successors will be wiser than they, from the progressive advance of science.  Tranquillity is the summum bonum of age.  I wish, therefore, to offend no man’s opinions, nor to draw disquieting animadversions on my own.  While duty required it, I met opposition with a firm and fearless step.  But, loving mankind in my individual relations with them, I pray to be permitted to depart in their peace; and like the superannuated soldier, ’quadragenis stipendiis emeritis’to hang my arms on the post.  I have unwisely, I fear, embarked in an enterprise of great public concern, but not to be accomplished within my term, without their liberal and prompt support.  A severe illness the last year and another from which I am just emerged, admonish me that repetitions may be expected, against which a declining frame cannot long bear up.  I am anxious therefore to get our University so far advanced as may encourage the public to persevere to its final accomplishment.  That secured, I shall sing my Nunc demittas.  I hope your labors will be long continued in the spirit in which they have always been exercised, in maintenance of those principles on which I verily believe the future happiness of our country essentially depends.  I salute you with affectionate and great respect.

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CL.—­TO JOHN ADAMS, December 10, 1819

TO JOHN ADAMS.

Monticello, December 10, 1819.

Dear Sir,

I have to acknowledge the receipt of your favor of November the 23rd.  The banks, bankrupt-law, manufacturers, Spanish treaty, are nothing.  These are occurrences which, like waves in a storm, will pass under the ship.  But the Missouri question is a breaker on which we lose the Missouri country by revolt, and what more, God only knows.  From the battle of Bunker’s Hill to the treaty of Paris, we never had so ominous a question.  It even damps the joy with which I hear of your high health, and welcomes to me the consequences of my want of it.  I thank God that I shall not live to witness its issue. Sed haec hactenus.

I have been amusing myself latterly with reading the voluminous letters of Cicero.  They certainly breathe the purest effusions of an exalted patriot, while the parricide Caesar is lost in odious contrast.  When the enthusiasm, however, kindled by Cicero’s pen and principles, subsides into cool reflection, I ask myself, What was that government which the virtues of Cicero were so zealous to restore, and the ambition of Caesar to subvert?  And if Caesar had been as virtuous as he was daring and sagacious, what could he, even in the plenitude of his usurped power, have done to lead his fellow-citizens into good government?  I do not say to restore it, because they never had it, from the rape of the Sabines to the ravages of the Caesars.  If their people indeed had been,