Andrew Jackson and his family, after Van Buren’s inauguration, made a triumphant progress southward and, on March 25, 1837, reached the Hermitage. To Martin Van Buren he wrote on March 30: “I reached home ... with a very bad cough, increased by a cold taken on board the Steam Boat.... I hope rest in due time may restore my health so as be enabled to amuse myself in riding over my farm and visiting my neighbors....” But however interested he was in his farm and his neighbors he took time to write his successor and protégé several pages of very sound advice on state affairs: “Fearlessly pursue your principles avowed, and the people will sustain you against all apostates, ambitious, and designing men ...” and take care of “the safety of the deposit Banks of the West, and south....” From that time onward the Hermitage was prominent in the eyes of the nation. The younger statesmen paid visits to “the sage of the Hermitage” as the ancients consulted oracles—and the masses continued to worship the “Hero of New Orleans.” His domestic life flowed easily and pleasantly under the skilled and tactful direction of his daughter, Sarah. The adored little Rachel dogged his footsteps, rode with him, and, with her bright prattle, enlivened his days. Mrs. Marion Adams, Sarah’s older sister, now widowed, made her home at the Hermitage, and Rachel’s relatives came from their neighboring estates to pay respects to their beloved kinsman. Never was a lonely old man surrounded with greater affection or more kindly care. But what of the outward appearance of the Hermitage of this period? There is every indication that the cedars along the driveway were set out at this time. A drawing of the Hermitage dated 1856 indicates that the cedars were still quite young at that time, and a statement of Parton, based on his visit to Nashville prior to the publication of his _Life of Andrew Jackson_ in 1859, further corroborates it and gives, as well, an interesting picture of the appearance which the Hermitage finally assumed after its series of changes. He wrote: “Now we leave the turnpike and turn into a private road, straight, narrow, a quarter of a mile long, the land on both sides dead level. We come to a low iron gate in a white wooden frame, which admits us to an avenue of young cedars, ending in a grove, through which a guitar-shaped lawn is visible.... We alight, at length, on the stone steps of the piazza, and the Hermitage is before us.... A two-story brick house, with a double piazza both in front and in the rear; the piazza wooden and painted white supported by thick grooved pillars of the same material and color. The floors of the lower piazza are of stone, and each terminates in a wing of the house....”