SIR,--I have duly received your favor of the 13th of December, informing me of the institution of the American Antiquarian Society, and expressing its disposition to honor me with an admission into it, and the request of my co-operation in the advancement of its objects. No one can be more sensible of the honor and the favor of these dispositions, and I pray you to have the goodness to testify to them all the gratitude I feel on receiving assurances of them. There has been a time of life when I should have entered into their views with zeal, and with a hope of not being altogether unuseful. But, now more than septuagenary, retired from the active scenes and business of life, I am sensible how little I can contribute to the advancement of the objects of their views; but I shall certainly, and with great pleasure, embrace any occasion which shall occur, of rendering them any services in my power. With these assurances, be so good as to accept for them and for yourself, those of my high respect and consideration. TO DOCTOR THOMAS COOPER. MONTICELLO, January 16, 1814. DEAR SIR,--Your favor of November 8th, if it was rightly dated, did not come to hand till December 13th, and being absent on a long journey, it has remained unanswered till now. The copy of your introductory lecture was received and acknowledged in my letter of July 12, 1812, with which I sent you Tracy's first volume on Logic. Your Justinian came safely also, and I have been constantly meaning to acknowledge it, but I wished, at the same time, to say something more. I possessed Theopilus', Vinnius' and Harris' editions, but read over your notes and the _addenda et corrifenda_, and especially the parallels with the English law, with great satisfaction and edification. Your edition will be very useful to our lawyers, some of whom will need the translation as well as the notes. But what I had wanted to say to you on the subject, was that I much regret that instead of this work, useful as it may be, you had not bestowed the same time and research rather on a translation and notes on Bracton, a work which has never been performed for us, and which I have always considered as one of the greatest desiderata in the law. The laws of England, in their progress from the earliest to the present times, may be likened to the road of a traveller, divided into distinct stages or resting places, at each of which a review is taken of the road passed over so far. The first of these was Bracton's _De legibus Angliæ_; the second, Coke's Institutes; the third, the Abridgment of the law by Matthew Bacon; and the fourth, Blackstone's Commentaries. Doubtless there were others before Bracton which have not reached us. Alfred, in the preface to his laws, says they were compiled from those of Ina, Offa, and Aethelbert, into which, or rather preceding them, the clergy have interpolated the 20th, 21st, 22d, 23d and 24th chapters of