of the Acts
of the Apostles, from the 23rd to the 29th verses. But this would lead
my pen and your patience too far. What a conspiracy this, between Church
and State! Sing Tantarara, rogues all, rogues all, Sing Tantarara,
rogues all!

I must still add to this long and rambling letter, my acknowledgments
for your good wishes to the University we are now establishing in this
State. There are some novelties in it. Of that of a professorship of
the principles of government, you express your approbation. They will be
founded in the rights of man. That of agriculture, I am sure, you will
approve: and that also of Anglo-Saxon. As the histories and laws left us
in that type and dialect, must be the text-books of the reading of the
learners, they will imbibe with the language their free principles
of government. The volumes you have been so kind as to send, shall be
placed in the library of the University. Having at this time in England
a person sent for the purpose of selecting some Professors, a Mr.
Gilmer of my neighborhood, I cannot but recommend him to your patronage,
counsel, and guardianship, against imposition, misinformation, and the
deceptions of partial and false recommendations, in the selection
of characters. He is a gentleman of great worth and correctness, my
particular friend, well educated in various branches of science, and
worthy of entire confidence.

Your age of eighty-four and mine of eighty-one years, insure us a speedy
meeting. We may then commune at leisure, and more fully, on the good and
evil, which in the course of our long lives, we have.both witnessed; and
in the mean time, I pray you to accept assurances of my high veneration
and esteem for your person and character.

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER CLXXXII.--TO MARTIN VAN BUREN, June 29, 1824

TO MARTIN VAN BUREN.

Monticello, June 29, 1824.

Dear Sir,

I have to thank you for Mr. Pickering's elaborate philippic against Mr.
Adams, Gerry, Smith, and myself; and I have delayed the acknowledgment
until I could read it and make some observations on it.

I could not have believed, that for so many years, and to such a period
of advanced age, he could have nourished passions so vehement and
viperous. It appears, that for thirty years past, he has been
industriously collecting materials for vituperating the characters he
had marked for his hatred; some of whom certainly, if enmities towards
him had ever existed, had forgotten them all, or bur