I wrote to your mamma yesterday, my dear Catherine, intending to have written by the same post to yourself. An interruption, however, put it out of my power. It was the more necessary to have done it, as I had inadvertently made an acknowledgment in my letter to her instead of yourself, of yours of the 16th. I receive with sincere pleasure this evidence of your recollection, and assure you I reflect with great pleasure on the scenes which your letter recalls. You are often the subject of our conversation, not indeed at our fireside, for that is the season of our dispersion, but in our summer walks when the family reassembles at Monticello. You are tenderly remembered by both Mrs. Randolph and Mrs. Eppes, and I have this day notified Maria that I have promised you a letter from her. She was not much addicted to letter-writing before; and I fear her new character of mother may furnish new excuses for her remissness. Should this, however, be the occasion of my becoming the channel of your mutual love, it may lessen the zeal with which I press her pen upon her. But in whatever way I hear from you, be assured it will always be with that sincere pleasure which is inspired by the sentiments of esteem and attachment with which I am, my dear Catherine, your affectionate friend and humble servant, TH. JEFFERSON. In a letter to Mr. Randolph, written early in February, Mr. Jefferson makes the following remarks about Bonaparte: _To Thomas Mann Randolph._ Should it be really true that Bonaparte has usurped the Government with an intention of making it a free one, whatever his talents may be for war, we have no proofs that he is skilled in forming governments friendly to the people. Wherever he has meddled, we have seen nothing but fragments of the old Roman governments stuck into materials with which they can form no cohesion: we see the bigotry of an Italian to the ancient splendor of his country, but nothing which bespeaks a luminous view of the organization of rational government. Perhaps, however, this may end better than we augur; and it certainly will if his head is equal to true and solid calculations of glory. And again, in a letter of a few days' later date, to Samuel Adams: _To Samuel Adams._