For Jefferson was eager to remain on good personal terms with Washington, even if he strongly disapproved of his policies, and this appeared when a few months later he denied having communicated to Bache's _Aurora_ the questionnaire on the _Little Sarah_, and he seized the occasion to assure Washington once again of his affectionate sentiments. But he was already thinking of protecting himself, for in the same letter he asked the President to send him copies of the opinions presented by Hamilton and Randolph as "they had his opinion and he never had been able to obtain copy of theirs." And significantly he added, "Though I do not know that it will ever be of the least importance to me, yet one loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them."[334] The summer was apparently entirely occupied in agricultural and scientific pursuits. La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, the former president of the National Assembly, at whose house Jefferson used to visit when in Paris to meet the "_républicains_", was then traveling through the United States and stopped at Monticello for a week. The Duke has left us a most valuable description of Jefferson's establishment and the country around it. He praised the house "which will deserve when completed to be ranked with the most pleasant mansions in France and in Europe." He admired the view from the hill: for "Mr. Jefferson's house commands one of the most extensive prospects you can meet with." But his eye was that of a refined and overcivilized Frenchman of the eighteenth century accustomed to limited horizons, limited forests, to a certain balance between the woods, the rivers and the lands inclosed with hedges, to a nature stamped, modified, remolded by centuries of human labor. The contrast between the "moderate French landscapes" and the unlimited vistas in which plowed fields occupied a negligible space, impressed him almost painfully. [Illustration: MONTICELLO AS IT APPEARS TO-DAY _Copyright Harris and Ewing, Washington, D. C._] It was a magnificent view, but too vast; and rather than look at the scene as it presented itself, he preferred to call on fancy "to picture to us those plains and mountains such as population and culture will render them in a greater or smaller number of years." He looked with some suspicion at the numerous agricultural experiments of Jefferson, who seemed "to have derived his knowledge from books." He was not alone in this opinion. In any farming country, innovations are looked upon askance and we are not surprised to learn that "his system is entirely confined to himself; it is censured by some of his neighbours, who are also employed in improving their culture with ability and skill, but he adheres to it, and thinks it founded on just observation." Finally came the picture of the master himself and life at Monticello, worth preserving and reproducing.