We have already described the house, and glanced at its appointments, but may add that the former seemed designed for an opulent and an easy hospitality, and that the latter, while rich, was plainly and solidly so. No expedients, no tricks of show met the eye; but all was well set forth with a sort of nobleness, yet nothing of pomp. The apartments were of ample size; the furniture neither scanty nor (as now seems the mode) huddled together, as if the master were a salesman. Nothing seemed wanting, nothing too much. A finished urbanity and yet a thorough cordiality reigned in every thing: all the ways, all the persons, all the objects of the place were agreeable and even interesting. You soon grew at your ease, if at arriving you had been otherwise: for here was, in its perfection, that happiest part and surest test of good-breeding--the power of at once putting every one at ease. The attentions were not over-assiduous, not slack; but kept, to great degree, out of sight, by making a body of thoroughly-trained and most mannerly servants their ministrants, so that the hosts performed in person little but the higher rites of hospitality, and thus seemed to have no trouble and much pleasure in entertaining you. Accordingly, there has seldom, even in the hilarious land of old Virginia, been a house kept--especially by elderly people--at which it was pleasanter to be a sojourner. They always made you glad to have come, and sorry that you must go. Such was the main interior life of Montpelier. Its business seemed but the giving pleasure to its guests, of whom a perpetual succession came and went. Little was seen of the working machinery of the fine, and on the whole, well-managed estate, that poured forth its copious supplies to render possible all this lavish entertainment, this perennial flow of feasting. For here, be it observed, as elsewhere in the rural hospitalities of Virginia, it was not single visitors that were to be accommodated, but families and parties. Nor did these arrive unattended, for each brought with it a retinue of servants, a stud of horses, and all were to be provided for. Meantime, the master was seen little to direct in person the husbandry of his domain; and indeed, he was known to be too feeble to do so. Nevertheless, the tillage of Montpelier was productive and its soil held in a state of progressive improvement. Indeed, capable of every thing he had engaged in, except arms (in which the Jeffersonian dynasty, except Monroe, must be confessed not to have excelled)--wise, attentive, and systematic, he had established his farming operations upon a method so good and regular, that they went on well, with only his occasional inspection, and the nightly reports of his head men of the blacks. The mildest and humanest of masters, he had brought about among his slaves, by a gentle exactness, and the care to keep them happy while well-governed, great devotion to him and their duties, and a far more than usual intelligence.