Until very recently the material for a study of the formative years of Thomas Jefferson was very scanty. Many of his earliest letters have disappeared and he always felt a strong disinclination to analyze himself in writing. It was also contrary to his training and to the customs of his milieu to discuss personal matters too frankly and too openly. An American Jean-Jacques Rousseau baring his heart to posterity would have been as out of place as a man from the moon in New England or Virginia. But what he did not express as his personal feelings, he copied from the philosophers and poets he read during his studious nights or when resting under a tree on one of the hills surrounding Shadwell. The two commonplace books I have recently published, written by Jefferson during his student days and consulted by him throughout his life, could rightly be called "Jefferson self-revealed."[11] They enable us at any rate to determine with a fair degree of certainty the sentimental and intellectual preoccupations that filled his mind when examining the problems of society and the universe. It does not seem that, until 1764, that is to say until the unfortunate ending of his love affair with Belinda, Jefferson had ever been touched by any religious doubt. When, in July, 1763, he foresaw the possibility of being rejected, he wrote to Page a long letter in which he appears still strongly marked by the Christian training he had received in his family and at the hand of Mr. Douglas and the Reverend Mr. Maury: Perfect happiness, I believe, was never intended by the Deity to be the lot of one of his creatures in this world; but that he has very much put in our power the nearness of our approaches to it, is what I have steadfastly believed.