eager in prying into its councils and proceedings, gave me a knowledge of these also.  My information was always, and immediately committed to writing, in letters to Mr. Jay, and often to my friends, and a recurrence to these letters now insures me against errors of memory.  These opportunities of information ceased at this period, with my retirement from this interesting scene of action.  I had been more than a year soliciting leave to go home, with a view to place my daughters in the society and care of their friends, and to return for a short time to my station at Paris.  But the metamorphosis through which our government was then passing from its chrysalid to its organic form, suspended its action in a great degree; and it was not till the last of August that I received the permission I had asked.  And here I cannot leave this great and good country, without expressing my sense of its pre-eminence of character among the nations of the earth.  A more benevolent people I have never known, nor greater warmth and devotedness in their select friendships.  Their kindness and accommodation to strangers is unparalleled, and the hospitality of Paris is beyond any thing I had conceived to be practicable in a large city.  Their eminence, too, in science, the communicative dispositions of their scientific men, the politeness of the general manners, the ease and vivacity of their conversation, give a charm to their society, to be found nowhere else.  In a comparison of this with other countries, we have the proof of primacy, which was given to Themistocles after the battle of Salamis.  Every general voted to himself the first reward of valor, and the second to Themistocles.  So, ask the traveled inhabitant of any nation, In what country on earth would you rather live?—­Certainly, in my own, where are all my friends, my relations, and the earliest and sweetest affections and recollections of my life.  Which would be your second choice?  France.

On the 26th of September, I left Paris for Havre, where I was detained by contrary winds, until the 8th of October.  On that day, and the 9th, I crossed over to Cowes, where I had engaged the Clermont, Capt.  Colley, to touch for me.  She did so; but here again we were detained by contrary winds, until the 22nd, when we embarked, and landed at Norfolk on the 23rd of November.  On my way home, I passed some days at Eppington, in Chesterfield, the residence of my friend and connection, Mr. Eppes; and, while there, I received a letter from the President, General Washington, by express, covering an appointment to be Secretary of State. [See Appendix, note H.] I received it with real regret.  My wish had been to return to Paris, where I had left my household establishment, as if there myself, and to see the end of the Revolution, which, I then thought, would be certainly and happily closed in less than a year.  I then meant to return home, to withdraw from political life, into which I had been impressed by the circumstances of the times,