n wrote to
Jefferson, "will assuage the jealousies which have been artificially
created by designing men, and will at the same time point out the faults
which call for amendment."

Immediately after the adjournment of the Richmond Convention he returned
to New York, where the confederate Congress was still in session. That
body had little to do now but decide upon the time and place of the
inauguration of the new government. Madison had entered upon his
thirty-eighth year, and we get an interesting glimpse of him as he
appeared at this time of his life to an intelligent foreigner. "Mr.
Warville Brissot has just arrived here," he wrote to Jefferson in
August, 1788. This was Brissot de Warville, a Frenchman of the new
philosophy,--whose head, nevertheless, his compatriots cut off a few
years later,--then traveling in America to observe the condition and
progress of the new republic. His tour extended to nearly all the
States; he met with most of the distinguished men of the country; and he
made a careful and intelligent use of his many opportunities for
observation. On his return to France he wrote an entertaining
volume,--"New Travels in the United States of America,"--still to be
found in some old libraries. What he says of Madison is worth repeating,
not only for the impression he made upon an observant stranger, but as
the evidence of the contemporary estimate of his character and
reputation, which De Warville must have gathered from others.

"The name of Madison," he writes, "celebrated in America, is well
known in Europe by the merited eulogium made of him by his
countryman and friend, Mr. Jefferson.

"Though still young, he has rendered the greatest services to
Virginia, to the American Confederation, and to liberty and
humanity in general. He contributed much, with Mr. White, in
reforming the civil and criminal codes of his country. He
distinguished himself particularly in the convention for the
acceptation of the new federal system. Virginia balanced a long
time in adhering to it. Mr. Madison determined to it the members of
the convention by his eloquence and logic. This republican appears
to be about thirty-eight years of age. He had, when I saw him, an
air of fatigue; perhaps it was the effect of the immense labors to
which he has devoted himself for some time past. His look announces
a censor, his conversation discovers the man of le