rable report, and a bill conformable,
assuming the repayment of all interest which the State has actually
paid. The legislature will certainly owe to us the recovery of this
money; for had they not given it in some measure the reverenced
character of a donation for the promotion of learning, it would never
have been paid. It is to be hoped, therefore, that the displeasure
incurred by wringing it from them at the last session, will now give
way to a contrary feeling, and even place us on a ground of some merit.
Should this sentiment take place, and the arrival of our Professors, and
filling our dormitories with students on the 1st of February, encourage
them to look more favorably towards us, perhaps it might dispose them to
enlarge somewhat their order on the same fund. You observe the Proctor
has stated in a letter accompanying our Report, that it will take about
twenty-five thousand dollars more than we have to finish the Rotunda.
Besides this, an Anatomical theatre (costing about as much as one of our
hotels, say about five thousand dollars,) is indispensable to the school
of Anatomy. There cannot be a single dissection until a proper theatre
is prepared, giving an advantageous view of the operation to those
within, and effectually excluding observation from without. Either the
additional sums, therefore, of twenty-five thousand and five thousand
dollars will be wanting, or we must be permitted to appropriate a part
of the fifty thousand to a theatre, leaving the Rotunda unfinished for
the present. Yet I should think neither of these objects an equivalent
for renewing the displeasure of the legislature. Unless we can carry
their hearty patronage with us, the institution can never flourish.
I would not, therefore, hint at this additional aid, unless it were
agreeable to our friends generally, and tolerably sure of being carried
without irritation.

In your letter of December the 31st, you say my 'hand-writing and my
letters have great effect there,' i.e. at Richmond. I am sensible, my
dear Sir, of the kindness with which this encouragement is held up to
me. But my views of their effect are very different. When I retired from
the administration of public affairs, I thought I saw some evidence that
I retired with a good degree of public favor, and that my conduct in
office had been considered, by the one party at least, with approbation,
and with acquiescence by the other. But the attempt, in which I have
embarked so ea