you see I am an enthusiast on the subject of the arts. but it is an enthusiasm of which I am not ashamed, as it’s object is to improve the taste of my countrymen, to increase their reputation, to reconcile to them the respect of the world & procure them it’s praise.

you are perhaps curious to know how this new scene has struck a savage of the mountains of America. Not advantageously I assure you. I find the general fate of humanity here most deplorable. The truth of Voltaire’s observation offers itself perpetually, that every man here must be either the...

what are the objects of an useful American education? classical knowlege, modern languages & chiefly French, Spanish, & Italian; Mathematics; Natural philosophy; Natural History; Civil History; Ethics.

honesty, knowlege & industry are the qualities which will lead you to the highest emploiments of your country, & to it’s highest esteem, and with these to that satisfaction which renders life pleasant, & death secure.

I catch this moment to write you a few lines by Mr Fulwar Skipwith who is going from this place in an hour, to embark for London I Recd Toms and Mr Elders, letters by the Mermaid yesterday, and I am concerned very much, to be informed of your Situation, respecting pecuniary Matters but I hope the...

Heliotrope.to be sowed in the spring.a delicious flower, but I suspect it must be planted in boxes & kept in the house in the winter. the smell rewards the care.

I fear from an expression in your letter that the people of Kentucké think of separating, not only from Virginia (in which they are right,) but also from the confederacy. I own I should think this a most calamitous event, and such an one as every good citizen on both sides should set himself...

our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.

Allow me my Dear Girl to profit of the promise you have made me to correspond with me, and as I cannot bear the least shadow of formality between friends, I shall thro’ the whole of this letter endeavour to put away the remembrance of its being the first letter; I hope you will follow my example....

the city of London, tho’ handsomer than Paris, is not so handsome as Philadelphia. their architecture is in the most wretched stile I ever saw, not meaning to except America where it is bad, nor even Virginia where it is worse than in any other part of America, which I have seen.

the English are still our enemies ... the spirit existing there, and rising in America, has a very lowering aspect. to what events it may give birth, I cannot foresee. we are young, and can survive them; but their rotten machine must crush under the trial.

What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment or death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment be deaf to all those motives whose power supported him thro’ his trial, and inflict on his fellow men a bondage,...