After the storm and stress of so many years of public life, and of public life in an epoch of revolution, the invalid body, the care-burdened spirit, of Patrick Henry must have found great refreshment in this removal to a distant, wild, and mountainous solitude. In undisturbed seclusion, he there remained during the summer and autumn of 1779, and even the succeeding winter and spring,--scarcely able to hear the far-off noises of the great struggle in which he had hitherto borne so rugged a part, and of which the victorious issue was then to be seen by him, though dimly, through many a murky rack of selfishness, cowardice, and crime. His successor in the office of governor was Thomas Jefferson, the jovial friend of his own jovial youth, bound to him still by that hearty friendship which was founded on congeniality of political sentiment, but was afterward to die away, at least on Jefferson's side, into alienation and hate. To this dear friend Patrick Henry wrote late in that winter, from his hermitage among the eastward fastnesses of the Blue Ridge, a remarkable letter, which has never before been in print, and which is full of interest for us on account of its impulsive and self-revealing words. Its tone of despondency, almost of misanthropy,--so unnatural to Patrick Henry,--is perhaps a token of that sickness of body which had made the soul sick too, and had then driven the writer into the wilderness, and still kept him there:-- TO THOMAS JEFFERSON. LEATHERWOOD, 15th Feby., 1780. DEAR SIR,--I return you many thanks for your favor by Mr. Sanders. The kind notice you were pleased to take of me was particularly obliging, as I have scarcely heard a word of public matters since I moved up in the retirement where I live. I have had many anxieties for our commonwealth, principally occasioned by the depreciation of our money. To judge by this, which somebody has called the pulse of the state, I have feared that our body politic was dangerously sick. God grant it may not be unto death. But I cannot forbear thinking, the present increase of prices is in great part owing to a kind of habit, which is now of four or five years' growth, which is fostered by a mistaken avarice, and like other habits hard to part with. For there is really very little money hereabouts.