utility, but frowning and unyielding in all visionary projects, and all unworthy calls on his charity. His heart was not warm in its affections; but he exactly calculated every man's value, and gave him a solid esteem proportionate to it. His person was fine, his stature exactly what one could wish, his deportment easy, erect and noble, the best horseman of his age, and the most graceful figure that could be seen on horseback. Although in the circle of his friends, where he might be unreserved with safety, he took a free share in conversation, his colloquial talents were not above mediocrity, possessing neither copiousness of ideas nor fluency of words. In public when called upon for a sudden opinion, he was unready, short, and embarrassed. Yet he wrote readily, rather diffusely, in an easy and correct style. This he acquired by conversation with the world, for his education was merely reading, writing, and common arithmetic, to which he added surveying at a later day. His time was employed in action chiefly, reading little, and that only in agriculture and English history. His correspondence became necessarily extensive, and with journalizing his agricultural proceedings occupied most of his leisure within doors. On the whole, his character was in its mass perfect, in nothing bad, in a few points indifferent, and it may truly be said that never did nature and fortune combine more perfectly to make a man great, and to place him in the same constellation with whatever worthies have merited from man an everlasting remembrance. For his was the singular destiny and merit of leading the armies of his country successfully through an arduous war for the establishment of its independence; of conducting its councils through the birth of a government, new in its forms and principles, until it had settled down into a quiet and orderly train; and of scrupulously obeying the laws through the whole of his career, civil and military, of which the history of the world furnishes no other example."

THOMAS JEFFERSON, twice President of the United States, was born in Albemarle County, Virginia, April, 1743. His father was an early settler there; had been employed in various boundary surveys, and aided in constructing the first map of Virginia ever made.

After receiving a tolerable preliminary education, Jefferson studied at William and Mary College, Williamsburg, and learned a great deal from its professor of mathematics, Dr. Small, a Scotchman, whose services to his early culture are gratefully acknowledged in his autobiography.

was a student of law when, in the House of Burgesses of Virginia, he heard with sympathy and admiration Patrick Henry declaim against the Stamp Act.

Two years later he was called to the bar, and was rising to eminence

in his profession, when he diverged permanently into politics. In 1769 he was elected a member of the House of Burgesses for his county, and made an unsuccessful effort for the emancipation of the negroes. He soon became one of the leaders of those younger members of the house who were for bold measures, and disliked the timidity of their senior fellow-representatives. On the dissolution of the Virginia Assembly by the Governor, after its assertion of the right of self-taxation, Jefferson joined Washington, Patrick Henry, and others, in protesting.

In 1773 he aided in organizing the Standing Committee of Correspondence, which proved an important agency in the American Revolution, maintaining as it did a constant communication between the dis affected provinces. He was a member of the first Virginian convention, which met independently of the British authorities; and a bold paper, which he laid before it, entitled, "A Summary View of the Rights of British America," was adopted by Burke, and republished with some alterations by him in London. To the General Congress Jefferson was sent as one of the delegates of Virginia, and the original draught of the celebrated Declaration of Independence was his handiwork.

He retired from Congress to labour in the legislature of his native state, where he procured the abolition of entails, and, after a long struggle, that of the Anglican Church establishment. He advocated a general scheme of State education, and, with even less success, a plan for the gradual emancipation of the slaves.

He does not seem to have had any military ambition or skill, and contented himself during the War of Independence with discharging the civil duties of the Governorship of Virginia, to which he was elected in 1779. He had twice previously declined, for domestic reasons, a mission to Europe. However, after peace was declared, he accepted the mission, and in company with Franklin and Adams went to Paris to regulate treaties with the nations of Europe. In these negotiations his principal success was with Frederick the Great.

He succeeded Franklin as Minister at Paris, and witnessed the early scenes of the French Revolution. On his way home, in 1789, he was met by the offer of the Secretaryship of State, which he accepted. He entered on his duties in March, 1790, and was the leader of the democratic section of the Cabinet, in opposition to the Federals led by Alexander Hamilton; and Washington had no small difficulty in making his divided ministry work.

At the close of 1793 Jefferson resigned, and returned to his plantations to occupy himself with study and agriculture: but he could not forget politics, and in his retirement he directed in some measure the councils and operations of the democratic anti-federalists, the party opposed to Washington. In 1796 he was nominated candidate for the Presidency ; was defeated by Adams, but became Vice-President. In this position he

was the life and soul of the democratic party, and he reaped the fruits of his exertions when, in 1801, he was elected President. It was with Jefferson's election that, as M. Guizot observes, the long rule of the democratic party in the United States began; and to his leadership its triumph is mainly due.

The great event of his first Presidency was his negotiation of the pur chase of Louisiana, which had been ceded to France by Spain, and which Napoleon thought it would be difficult to preserve from the clutches of England during the war.

At the expiration of his term of office, he was re-elected. His second Presidency was distinguished by the promptitude and stringency with which he laid and maintained an embargo on outward-bound American vessels, when the commerce of the United States was threatened with obstruction. At the close of his second Presidency, Jefferson withdrew to private life, still taking a keen interest in public and local affairs. Through his exertions the University of Virginia was founded. His later years were somewhat clouded by pecuniary difficulties, the result of obligations incurred in behalf of a friend. An autobiography which he had commenced, and which is printed in his works, stops unfortunately at the close of his residence in Paris. His "Notes on Virginia," drawn up on the eve of his mission to Europe, have been often reprinted. He died on the 4th of July, 1826-the very day on which, fifty years before, the Declaration of Independence was signed.

HORATIO NELSON, the most celebrated of British naval heroes, was born in the parsonage-house of Burnham Thorpe, a village in the county of Norfolk, of which his father was rector. He was educated first at Norwich, and next at North Walsham, but in his twelfth year he became a midshipman under his uncle, Captain Suckling, of the Raisonnable. Soon after this he sailed to the Antilles in a vessel belonging to the mercantile marine. On his return he joined the Triumph, then stationed as a guard-ship in the Thames, and he was next appointed to the Carcass, one of the vessels sent on an expedition to the North Pole, under the orders of Captain Phipps. Then he went to the East Indies in the SeaHorse, with the squadron commanded by Sir Edward Hughes. When he had been about eighteen months in India, he felt the effects of the