watch the growth of his wheat and his
clover; to contrive new coulters for his plows; to talk of philosophy,
of the Social Contract, of mechanics, and of natural history: if he was
averse to public life, it was not because political power and
distinction were a burden to him, except as they brought with them
strife and unpopularity, which truly his soul loathed for himself,
though he rather liked to set other people by the ears. His private life
was unquestionably as full of interest to himself as it is entertaining
to look upon in the unconscious revelation of his own letters.

But with Madison it was apparently quite otherwise. He unbent with
difficulty. Always solemn and dignified, it was rather painful than
pleasant to him to stoop to the petty matters of every-day existence. He
had no small affectations, and was not forever asserting that he was
without ambition; as if that, without which nobody is of much use in the
world either to himself or to others, were a weakness akin to depravity.
With brief intervals, covering only a few months altogether, he was
where he best liked to be, from his entrance upon public life in 1775
till he stepped down in 1817 from that political elevation beyond which
there are no ascending steps. During these forty-two years he found a
certain enjoyment in a country home for a little while at a time, but it
was chiefly the enjoyment of needed rest from official labor. The price
of tobacco and the promise of the wheat crop interested him then, but
only as they interested him always as a source of his own income, and
as the index to the general prosperity. At the end of a letter upon
political matters, he announces with satisfaction that his merino ewe
has dropped a lamb, and both mother and offspring are as well as could
be expected; but it was probably Mr. Jefferson's gratification rather
than his own that he had in mind, for it was Mr. Jefferson who had
imported the sheep. Again, in a similar letter, he takes a little
remaining space to express a hope that Mr. Jefferson may permit the use
of the rams of that flock to improve the breed of the native stock; not,
apparently, that he cared so much about wool as that he wished to show a
courteous and friendly interest in one of Mr. Jefferson's many projects
for the improvement of things generally.

It was probably during the year of comparative leisure after he left
Congress that Mr. Madison built his house at Montpellier, though some
ques