Her memory is so fragrant with the perfume of purity and saintly sweetness, that it is a privilege to dwell and muse upon a theme so elevating. The world has not yet developed a more harmonious, refined or superior type of womanhood than the daughters of Virginia in the last century. Reared in ease and plenty, taught the virtues that ennoble, and valuing their good name no less than prizing their family lineage, they were the most delightful specimens of womanhood ever extant. Most particularly was Martha Jefferson of this class, whose image is fast losing originality in the modern system of utilitarian education. Her father’s and her husband’s great enemy, pronounced her “the sweetest woman in Virginia;” and the assurance comes laden with the testimony of many tongues, that her existence was one of genial sunshine and peace. Are not such natures doubly blessed, first, in the happiness they secure to themselves, and, secondly, in the blessing they are to those who walk in the light of their example? With the retirement of Mr. Jefferson from public life, came a new trouble in the shape of innumerable visitors, and the seventeen years he lived at Monticello was one continued scene of new faces and old friends. Even after the loss of property and accumulated debts, he was compelled to entertain thoughtless crowds who made pilgrimages to his shrine. Time and again he would go to an adjoining estate to secure that rest and quiet so essential to his health; but these visits were never of long duration, for he could not consent to be separated from his daughter, even though accompanied by his grandchildren. As the shadows began to darken round his earth-life, and bankruptcy to hover over him, he turned with redoubled affection to this idol, and she was strong and faithful to the last. Mother and sister she had buried, and she was yet strong enough to see her husband and father taken. “There were few eminent men of our country who did not visit Mr. Jefferson in his retirement, to say nothing of distinguished foreigners.” But all visitors were not as agreeable as “eminent men.” “There are a number of persons now living who have seen groups of utter strangers, of both sexes, planted in the passage between his study and dining-room, consulting their watches, and waiting for him to pass from one to the other to his dinner, so that they could momentarily stare at him. A female once punched through a window-pane of the house with her parasol to get a better view of him. When sitting in the shade of his porticoes to enjoy the coolness of the approaching evening, parties of men and women would sometimes approach within a dozen yards, and gaze at him point-blank until they had looked their fill, as they would have gazed on a lion in a menagerie.”