m the other States, and refusing it within
our own.

Accept the renewal of assurances of my respect.

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER CXXXVIII.--TO JOHN ADAMS, October 14, 1816

TO JOHN ADAMS,

Monticello, October 14, 1816.

Your letter, dear Sir, of May the 6th, had already well explained the
uses of grief. That of September the 3rd, with equal truth, adduces
instances of its abuse; and when we put into the same scale these
abuses, with the afflictions of soul which even the uses of grief cost
us, we may consider its value in the economy of the human being, as
equivocal at least. Those afflictions cloud too great a portion of
life, to find a counterpoise in any benefits derived from its uses. For
setting aside its paroxyms on the occasions of special bereavements, all
the latter years of aged men are overshadowed with its gloom. Whither,
for instance, can you and I look without seeing the graves of those we
have known? And whom can we call up, of our early companions, who has
not left us to regret his loss? This, indeed, may be one of the salutary
effects of grief; inasmuch as it prepares us to loose ourselves also
without repugnance. Doctor Freeman's instances of female levity cured by
grief, are certainly to the point, and constitute an item of credit in
the account we examine. I was much mortified by the loss of the Doctor's
visit, by my absence from home. To have shown how much I feel indebted
to you for making good people known to me, would have been one pleasure;
and to have enjoyed that of his conversation, and the benefits of
his information, so favorably reported by my family, would have been
another. I returned home on the third day after his departure. The loss
of such visits is among the sacrifices which my divided residence costs
me.

Your undertaking the twelve volumes of Dupuis, is a degree of heroism
to which I could not have aspired even in my younger days. I have been
contented with the humble achievement of reading the analysis of his
work by Destutt Tracy, in two hundred pages, octavo. I believe I should
have ventured on his own abridgment of the work, in one octavo volume,
had it ever come to my hands; but the marrow of it in Tracy has
satisfied my appetite: and even in that, the preliminary discourse of
the analyzer himself, and his conclusion, are worth more in my eye than
the body of the work. For the object of that seems to be to smother all
history under the mantle of allegory. If hist