traveller, Humboldt, was once visiting him, he saw a newspaper lying on his table, containing a slanderous and accrimonious attack; pointing it out to Mr. Jefferson, he said "why do you not hang the man?" "Put the paper in your pocket," replied the president with a smile, "and on your retnrn to your own country, if any one doubts the freedom of our press, show it to him, and tell him where you found it." Even at the period when his elevation to the chief magistracy was contested with so much violence, he says, in a letter to Governor Henry, of Maryland, a political opponent, "I feel extraordinary gratification in addressing this letter to you, with whom shades of difference in political sentiment have not prevented the interchange of good opinion, nor cut off the friendly offices of society. This political tolerance is the more valued by me, who consider social harmony as the first of human felicities, and the happiest moments those which are given to the effusions of the heart." His attachment, indeed, to his friends was warm and unvarying; he imparted to them, with unstudied and fearless confidence, all that he thought and felt; he entertained no ungenerous caution or distrust, and he had his reward in that firm support, which he received and had a right to expect from them, in every exigency.

The domestic habits of Mr. Jefferson were quite simple. His application was constant and excessive. He always rose very early; to a remark once made to him of surprise at his being able, amidst the numerous interruptions to which his public station exposed him, to transact his business, "I have made it a rule never to let the sun rise before me, and before I have breakfasted, to transact all the business called for by the day." His habits were so exact,

that in a cabinet abounding with papers, each one was so labelled and arranged as to be immediately found. After his retirement from public life, he maintained a correspondence wonderfully extensive. He usually rode every day for an hour or two, and continued to do so until a very short period before his death and though he retired early, his afternoons were, to the last, devoted to study, as his evenings were to his family circle.

JAMES MADISON was born on the 5th of March; 1751, (O. S.) at the dwelling of his maternal grandmother opposite to Port Royal, a town on the south side of the Rappahannock, in Virginia. The house of his parents, James Madison and Nelly Conway, was in Orange county, where he has always resided. In his father's lifetime it was a plain brick building, to which Mr. Madison added porticoes with extensive colonnades in front and rear, and other improve ments. Situated on the west side of the south-west mountain, at the foot of the Blue Ridge, about five and twenty miles from Charlottsville, it is remarkable for the beauty of the scenery and the purity of the air; and likewise that within a short distance of each other, in that region, three presidents of the United States, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe, all resided, as closely connected in personal attachment as political faith, who have impressed on the country a large share of the policy and distinction of these United States.

After passing through the usual elementary education, Mr. Madison was placed, at about twelve years of age, under the tuition of Donald Robertson, a distinguished teacher in that neighborhood, with whom he accomplished the common preparatory studies for a collegiate course. These studies were further prosecuted under the Reverend Thomas Martin, the parish minister, of the established church