sed by his own fault, ever troubled his peace of mind.

After the fire, his mother and the children took temporary refuge in the
home of an overseer, and Jefferson repaired to Monticello,--as he had named
the elevated spot on the paternal estate where he had already begun to
build the house which was his home for the remainder of his life.

Monticello is a small outlying peak, upon the outskirts of the mountainous
part of Virginia, west of the tide-water region, and rising 580 feet above
the plain at its foot. Upon its summit there is a space of about six
acres, leveled partly by nature and partly by art; and here, one hundred
feet back from the brow of the hill, Jefferson built his house. It is a
long, low building,--still standing,--with a Grecian portico in front,
surmounted by a cupola. The road by which it is approached winds round and
round, so as to make the ascent less difficult. In front of the house
three long terraces, terminating in small pavilions, were constructed; and
upon the northern terrace, or in its pavilion, Jefferson and his friends
used to sit on summer nights gazing off toward the Blue Ridge, some eighty
miles distant, or upon the nearer peaks of the Ragged Mountains. The
altitude is such that neither dew nor mosquitoes can reach it.

To this beautiful but as yet uncompleted mountain home, Jefferson, in
January, 1772, brought his bride. She was Martha Skelton, who had been
left a widow at nineteen, and was now twenty-two, a daughter of John
Wayles, a leading and opulent lawyer. Martha Skelton was a tall,
beautiful, highly educated young woman, of graceful carriage, with hazel
eyes, literary in her tastes, a skillful performer upon the spinnet, and a
notable housewife whose neatly kept account books are still preserved.
They were married at "The Forest," her father's estate in Charles City
County, and immediately set out for Monticello.

Two years later, in 1774, died Dabney Carr, a brilliant and patriotic
young lawyer, Jefferson's most intimate friend, and the husband of his
sister Martha. Dabney Carr left six small children, whom, with their
mother, Jefferson took under his wing, and they were brought up at
Monticello as if they had been his own children. Jefferson loved children,
and he had, in common with that very different character, Aaron Burr, an
instinct for teaching. While still a young man himself, he was often
called upon to direct the studies of other young men,--Madison and Monroe