Hence it follows that men engaged upon serious studies have necessarily been obliged to take part in the affairs of their country in order to become acquainted with them, and in the same way they inevitably found themselves actors in their revolution. But one melancholy fact must be observed, which is the prompt degeneration of talent, from the first men, who figured in the American troubles, down to the men of these latter days; and yet those men all touch. The old presidents of the Republic have a religious, simple, lofty, calm character, of which we find no trace in the blood-stained tumults of our own Republic and Empire. The solitude with which the Americans were surrounded reacted upon their nature; they achieved their liberty in silence. General Washington's farewell address[525] to the people of the United States might have been uttered by the gravest characters of antiquity: "How far in the discharge of my official duties," says the General, "I have been guided by the principles which have been delineated, the public records and other evidence of my conduct must witness to you, and to the world. To myself, the assurance of my own conscience is, that I have at least believed myself to be guided by them.... "Though, in reviewing the incidents of my Administration, I am unconscious of intentional error--I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors. Whatever they may be, I fervently beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate the evils to which they may tend. I shall also carry with me the hope that my country will never cease to view them with indulgence; and that, after forty-five years of my life dedicated to its service, with an upright zeal, the faults of incompetent abilities will be consigned to oblivion, as myself must soon be to the mansions of rest." Jefferson[526] in his house at Monticello, wrote, after the death of one of his two children: "The loss which I have experienced is a really great one. Others may lose of that which they possess in abundance, but I, of my whole portion, have now to deplore the loss of one-half. The declining years of my life are now held up by the slender thread of one human life. Perhaps I am destined to see the last tie of a father's affection broken!" Philosophy, which is rarely touching, is here touching in the highest degree. And this is not the idle grief of a man who had played no part in life. Jefferson died on the 4th of July 1826, in the eighty-fourth year of his age, and the fifty-fourth year of the independence of his country. His remains lie covered with a stone, having for sole epitaph the words: THOMAS JEFFERSON, AUTHOR OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.