nation of this volume of "Jefferson Papers" one cannot wholly escape a feeling of disappointment that no more has been printed of the collection. Mr. Coolidge's gift to the Society, of the letters not embraced in the mass purchased by the federal government in 1848, included three thousand or more letters. Hardly more than 200 are here printed. It is true that the act of 1848 intended that the line should be drawn between public and private papers, and that these are mostly private. Yet one cannot help feeling that a society which, in its volumes of the Winthrop Papers, seemed disposed to print much that was insignificant, might have given us more of the letters of and to Jefferson. But 1800 is not of equal importance with 1700 in the eyes of historical societies, and we must be grateful for what we have. We certainly have a very interesting volume. The varied interests of the many-sided Jefferson,—interests political, literary, scientific, educational, and agricultural—all find illustration. The letters addressed to him are about as numerous as those from his pen. The series begins in 1770, and ends but a month before Jefferson's death. The last dozen letters, between the old man and his granddaughter and her husband, living in Boston, are particularly pleasing in their pictures of New England conditions and their evidence of Jefferson's interest in them. Of earlier letters, there is especial interest in those of Stockdale, the London publisher, relative to the Notes on Virginia, in one from Eli Whitney, relating to his great invention, and in nearly a score of excellent letters from William Short. There is a letter from the wife of Jefferson's old friend John Page, which shows curious plans made for Page's last months and for the education of his children, by continuing the office of commissioner of loans to him or to members of the family or rich friends, Thomas Taylor or Benjamin Harrison of Berkley, who would agree to turn over the salary to Mrs. Page. Letters from Thomas Cooper are always vivacious. Also, there are letters from George Ticknor and others, concerning the University.
Of the strictly political letters of Jefferson himself, the most interesting is that of June 1, 1798, to John Taylor of Caroline, the famous letter in which Jefferson dissuades from disunion suggested on the ground of the Alien and Sedition Laws. That it has been printed before, in all three of the collections of Jefferson's writings, is no bar to its being printed here, for it is not printed correctly in any of the three. The tale is a curious one. In the Randolph edition of 1829, made mostly from press copies, Jefferson quotes Taylor as having said "that it was not unwise now to estimate the separate mass of Virginia and North Carolina, with a view to their separate existence" (III. 393). In the Washington edition, (IV. 245), the reading is the same. Mr. Ford, (VII. 263), prints the same words (1896). In 1894 Mr. W. W. Henry, who in his Patrick Henry had on the basis of this lettter called Taylor "a confessed disunionist," retracted the expression in a communication to the Virginia Magazine, (I. 325), having learned, from a note of George Tucker's in the Southern Literary Messenger for 1838 (II. 344) that the true reading should be "that it was not unusual now," etc., a very dif-
