characteristically furnished Federalism with a remarkable body of alarmist leaders; and thus it happened that Jefferson, because, with only a few of his great contemporaries, he had a thorough trust and confidence in the people, became the idol of American democracy. As Hamilton was somewhat officious and very combative, and Jefferson, although uncontentious, very suspicious and quite independent, both men holding inflexibly to opinions, cabinet harmony became impossible when the two secretaries had formed parties about them and their differences were carried into the newspapers;[14] and Washington abandoned perforce his idea "if parties did exist to reconcile them." Partly from discontent with a position in which he did not feel that he enjoyed the absolute confidence of the president,[15] and partly because of the embarrassed condition of his private affairs, Jefferson repeatedly sought to resign, and finally on the 31st of December 1793, with Washington's reluctant consent, gave up his portfolio and retired to his home at Monticello, near Charlottesville. Here he remained improving his estate (having refused a foreign mission) until elected vice-president in 1796. Jefferson was never truly happy except in the country. He loved gardening, experimented enthusiastically in varieties and rotations of crops and kept meteorological tables with diligence. For eight years he tabulated with painful accuracy the earliest and latest appearance of thirty-seven vegetables in the Washington market. When abroad he sought out varieties of grasses, trees, rice and olives for American experiment, and after his return from France received yearly for twenty-three years, from his old friend the superintendent of the _Jardin des plantes_, a box of seeds, which he distributed to public and private gardens throughout the United States. Jefferson seems to have been the first discoverer of an exact formula for the construction of mould-boards of least resistance for ploughs. He managed to make practical use of his calculus about his farms, and seems to have been remarkably apt in the practical application of mechanical principles.