From the first olive-fields of Pierrelatte to the orangeries of Hières has been continued rapture to me. I have often wished for you. I think you have not made this journey. It is a pleasure you have to come, and an improvement to be added to the many you have already made. It will be a great comfort to you to know, from your own inspection, the condition of all the provinces of your own country, and it will be interesting to them, at some future day, to be known to you. This is, perhaps, the only moment of your life in which you can acquire that knowledge. And to do it most effectually, you must be absolutely incognito, you must ferret the people out of their hovels, as I have done, look into their kettles, eat their bread, loll on their beds under pretense of resting yourself, but in fact to find if they are soft. You will feel a sublime pleasure in the course of this investigation, and a sublimer one hereafter, when you shall be able to apply your knowledge to the softening of their beds, or the throwing a morsel of meat into their kettle of vegetables. You will not wonder at the subjects of my letter; they are the only ones which have been presented to my mind for some time past, and the waters must always be what are the fountains from which they flow. According to this, indeed, I should have intermingled, from beginning to end, warm expressions of friendship to you. But, according to the ideas of our country, we do not permit ourselves to speak even truths, when they have the air of flattery. I content myself, therefore, with saying once more for all, that I love you, your wife and children. Tell them so, and adieu. Yours affectionately, TH. JEFFERSON. The following correspondence between Jefferson and his daughter Martha will be found unusually interesting. Her letters were written from the convent of Panthemont, in Paris, where she was at school. She was at the time fifteen years old, and the artlessness, intelligence, and warm affection with which she writes to her father render her letters inexpressibly charming. _Martha Jefferson to Thomas Jefferson._