om the town or
neighborhood preached a sermon, which was generally well attended. Few
colleges in this country have been more successful or more ably
conducted, and the excellence of instruction drew students from every
quarter of the South. Before the war there were nearly seven hundred
students, and I never saw a more enthusiastic set of young men, or a set
who desired knowledge for the sake of knowledge more enthusiastically
than did those in the University of Virginia.

Although it is universally admitted that Jefferson had a broad,
original, and powerful intellect, that he stamped his mind on the
institutions of his country, that to no one except Washington is the
country more indebted, yet I fail to see that he was transcendently
great in anything. He was a good lawyer, a wise legislator, an able
diplomatist, a clear writer, and an excellent president; but in none of
the spheres he occupied did he reach the most exalted height. As a
lawyer he was surpassed by Adams, Burr, and Marshall; as an orator he
was nothing at all; as a writer he was not equal to Hamilton and Madison
in profundity and power; as a diplomatist he was far below Franklin and
even Jay in tact, in patience, and in skill; as a governor he was timid
and vacillating; while as a president he is not to be compared with
Washington for dignity, for wisdom, for consistency, or executive
ability. Yet, on the whole, he has left a great name for giving shape to
the institutions of his country, and for intense patriotism. Pre-eminent
in no single direction, he was in the main the greatest political genius
that has been elevated to the presidential chair; but perhaps greater as
a politician than as a statesman in the sense that Pitt, Canning, and
Peel were statesmen. He was not made for active life; he was rather a
philosopher, wielding power by his pen, casting his searching glance
into everything, and leading men by his amiability, his sympathetic
nature, his force of character, and his enlightened mind. The question
might arise whether Jefferson's greatness was owing to force of
circumstances, or to an original, creative intellect, like that of
Franklin or Alexander Hamilton. But for the Revolution he might never
have been heard of outside his native State. This, however, might be
said of most of the men who have figured in American history,--possibly
of Washington himself. The great rulers of the world seem to be raised
up by Almighty Power, through peculi