The library is extensive, and contains, as might indeed be expected, a vast collection of rare and valuable works, on all subjects, and in all languages. Mr. Jefferson has also a large collection of mathematical, philosophical, and optical instruments, and Indian curiosities ...

The house is an irregular octagon, with porticoes on the east and west sides, and piazzas on the north and south ends. Its extent, including the porticoes and piazzas, is about one hundred and ten by ninety feet; the external is finished in the Doric order complete, with a ballustrade on the top...

Mr. Jefferson is very regular and temperate in his mode of living; he retires to his chamber about nine o’clock, and rises before the sun, both in summer and winter ... Until breakfast (which is early) he is employed in writing, after that he generally visits his work-shops, labourers, &c....

my essay in Architecture has been so much subordinated to the law of convenience, & affected also by the circumstance of change in the original design, that it is liable to some unfavorable & just criticisms.

I think that the work when finished will be a durable and honorable monument of our infant republic, and will bear favorable comparison with the remains of the same kind of the antient republics of Greece & Rome.

I find I am losing sight of the progress of the world of letters. here we talk but of rains & droughts, of blights & frosts, of our ploughs & cattle; & if the topic changes to politics I meddle little with them. in truth I never had a cordial relish for them, & abhor the...

I am become sensible of a great advantage your profession has over most others, that, to the close of your life, you can be always doing good to mankind: whereas a retired politician is like a broken down courser, unfit for the turf, and good for little else. I am endeavoring to recover the...

the principles on which we engaged, of which the charter of our independence is the record, were sanctioned by the laws of our being, and we but Obeyed them in pursuing undeviatingly the course they called for. it issued finally in that inestimable state of freedom which alone can ensure to man...

the contest which began with us which ushered in the dawn of our National existence and led us through various and trying Scenes, was for every thing dear to free born man.

To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted so as to be most useful, I should answer ‘by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only.’ yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers ... nothing can now be believed which is seen in a...