I owe an acknowledgment to your Imperial Majesty for the great satisfaction I have received from your letter of August the 20th, 1805, and embrace the opportunity it affords of giving expression to the sincere respect and veneration I entertain for your character. It will be among the latest and most soothing comforts of my life to have seen advanced to the government of so extensive a portion of the earth, at so early a period of his life, a sovereign whose ruling passion is the advancement of the happiness and prosperity of his people; and not of his own people only, but who can extend his eye and his good-will to a distant and infant nation, unoffending in its course, unambitious in its views. I have lying before me a letter, written in French, and over a superb signature, from the Emperor Alexander to Mr. Jefferson. It is dated "_à St. Petersbourg, ce 7 Novembre, 1804_," and at the close has this graceful paragraph: _From the Emperor Alexander._ Truly grateful for the interest which you have proved to me that you take in the well-being and prosperity of Russia, I feel that I can not better express similar feelings towards the United States, than by hoping they may long preserve at the head of their administration a chief who is as virtuous as he is enlightened. The bust of the Emperor was placed in the hall at Monticello, facing one of Napoleon, which stood on the opposite side of the door leading into the portico. Writing to one of his French friends--M. le Comte Diodati--on January 13, 1807, Jefferson says: _To Comte Diodati._ At the end of my present term, of which two years are yet to come, I propose to retire from public life, and to close my days on my patrimony of Monticello, in the bosom of my family. I have hitherto enjoyed uniform health; but the weight of public business begins to be too heavy for me, and I long for the enjoyments of rural life--among my books, my farms, and my family. Having performed my _quadragena stipendia_, I am entitled to my discharge, and should be sorry, indeed, that others should be sooner sensible than myself when I ought to ask it. I have, therefore, requested my fellow-citizens to think of a successor for me, to whom I shall deliver the public concerns with greater joy than I received them. I have the consolation, too, of having added nothing to my private fortune during my public service, and of retiring with hands as clean as they are empty. Wearied with the burden of public life, Jefferson had written his old friend, John Dickinson, two months earlier: _To John Dickinson._