Of the four digests noted, the three last are possessed and understood by every one. But the first, the fountain of them all, remains in its technical Latin, abounding in terms antiquated, obsolete, and unintelligible but to the most learned of the body of lawyers. To give it to us then in English, with a glossary of its old terms, is a work for which I know nobody but yourself possessing the necessary learning and industry. The latter part of it would be furnished to your hand from the glossaries of Wilkins, Lambard, Spelman, Somner in the X. Scriptores, the index of Coke and the law dictionaries. Could not such an undertaking be conveniently associated with your new vocation of giving law lectures? I pray you to think of it.[8] A further operation indeed, would still be desirable. To take up the doctrines of Bracton, _separatim et seriatim_, to give their history through the periods of Lord Coke and Bacon, down to Blackstone, to show when and how some of them have become extinct, the successive alterations made in others, and their progress to the state in which Blackstone found them. But this might be a separate work, left for your greater leisure or for some future pen.[9] I have long had under contemplation, and been collecting materials for the plan of an university in Virginia which should comprehend all the sciences useful to us, and none others. The general idea is suggested in the Notes on Virginia, Qu. 14. This would probably absorb the functions of William and Mary College, and transfer them to a healthier and more central position: perhaps to the neighborhood of this place. The long and lingering decline of William and Mary, the death of its last president, its location and climate, force on us the wish for a new institution more convenient to our country generally, and better adapted to the present state of science. I have been told there will be an effort in the present session of our legislature, to effect such an establishment. I confess, however, that I have not great confidence that this will be done. Should it happen, it would offer places worthy of you, and of which you are worthy. It might produce, too, a bidder for the apparatus and library of Dr. Priestley, to which they might add mine on their own terms. This consists of about seven or eight thousand volumes, the best chosen collection of its size probably in America, and containing a great mass of what is most rare and valuable, and especially of what relates to America.