s renewal of
acquaintance is no indifferent matter to one, acting at such a
distance, as that instructions cannot be received hot and hot. One of my
pleasures, too, will be that of talking over the old and new with you.

In the mean time, and at all times, I have the honor to be, with great
and sincere esteem. Dear Sir, your friend and servant,

Th: Jefferson,

LETTER CXCIV.--TO DOCTOR WILLARD, March 24, 1789

TO DOCTOR WILLARD.

Paris, March 24, 1789.

Sir,

I have been lately honored with your letter of September the 24th, 1788,
accompanied by a diploma for a Doctorate of Laws, which the University
of Harvard has been pleased to confer on me. Conscious how little I
merit it, I am the more sensible of their goodness and indulgence to
a stranger, who has had no means ef serving or making himself known to
them. I beg you to return them my grateful thanks, and to assure them
that this notice from so eminent a seat of science is very precious to
me.

The most remarkable publications we have had in France, for a year
or two past, are the following. _Les Voyages d'Anacharsis, par Abbe
Barthelemi_, seven volumes, octavo. This is a very elegant digest of
whatever is known of the Greeks; useless, indeed, to him who has read
the original authors, but very proper for one who reads modern languages
only. The works of the King of Prussia. The Berlin edition is in sixteen
volumes, octavo. It is said to have been gutted at Berlin; and here
it has been still more mangled. There are one or two other editions
published abroad, which pretend to have rectified the maltreatment both
of Berlin and Paris. Some time will be necessary to settle the public
mind as to the best edition.

Montignot has given us the original Greek, and a French translation of
the seventh book of Ptolemy's great work, under the title of _Etat des
Etoiles fixes au second siecle_, in quarto. He has given the designation
of the same stars by Flamsteed and Bayer, and their position in the
year 1786. A very remarkable work is the _Mechanique Analytique of La
Grange_, in quarto. He is allowed to be the greatest mathematician now
living, and his personal worth is equal to his science. The object of
his work is to reduce all the principles of mechanics to the single one
of the equilibrium, and to give a simple formula applicable to them
all. The subject is treated in the algebraic method, without diagrams to
assist the conception. My present occupations