In April, an incident of an interesting character occurred in Mr. Jefferson’s family. His oldest daughter, as has been seen, had been educated in the views and feelings of the Church of England. Her mother had zealously moulded her young mind in that direction. Her father had done nothing certainly, by word or act, to divert it from that channel; and it had flowed on, for aught Martha knew or suspected to the contrary, with his full approbation. If she had then been called upon to state what were her father’s religious beliefs, she would have declared that her impressions were that he leaned to the tenets of the church to which his family belonged. The daring and flippant infidelity now rife in French society, disgusted the earnest, serious, naturally reverential girl. The calm seclusion of Panthemont, its examples of serene and holy life, its intellectual associations, wooed her away from the turmoil and glare and wickedness and eruptions without. After meditating on the subject for a time, she wrote to her father for his permission to remain in a convent, and to dedicate herself to the duties of a religious life. For a day or two she received no answer. Then his carriage rolled up to the door of the Abbaye, and poor Martha met her father in a fever of doubts and fears. Never was his smile more benignant and gentle. He had a private interview with the Abbess. He then told his daughters he had come for them. They stepped into his carriage, it rolled away, and Martha’s school life was ended. Henceforth she was introduced into society, and presided, so far as was appropriate to her age, as the mistress of her father’s household. Neither he nor Martha ever, after her first letter on the subject, made the remotest allusion to each other to her request to enter a convent. She spoke of it freely in after years, to her children, and always expressed her full approbation of her father’s course on the occasion. She always spoke of her early wish as rather the dictate of a transient sentiment than a fixed conviction of religious duty; and she warmly applauded the quick and gentle way which her father took to lead her back to her family, her friends, and her country. Mr. Jefferson left the shores of Europe with his two daughters the 28th of October, 1789, and the following February Martha was married to Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr., who had been a ward of her father’s. “The young people were cousins, and had been attached to each other from childhood. He was tall, lean, with dark, expressive features and a flashing eye, commanding in carriage, elastic as steel, and had that sudden sinewy strength which it would not be difficult to fancy he inherited from the forest monarchs of Virginia.” On his return home, Mr. Jefferson was immediately tendered, and accepted a position in President Washington’s cabinet, and made his home in New York and afterward in Philadelphia until his withdrawal from public life.