The wanderings of the Madisons when they became reunited have passed into general history and need not here be recalled. Finally they returned to ruined Washington and watched it rise again from its ashes, British vandalism being in this instance productive of final good; for the new city was a vast improvement over the old one, which had been but tentative at the best. After the expiration of Mr. Madison's second term of office the pair took up their residence at Montpelier, and there lived almost in retirement until their deaths. Mrs. Madison survived her husband thirteen years; but she never survived the love which she gave him and which shows even more beautiful than their mutual emotion when we remember that these were middle-aged people when they were married. Even when they were old, long after their retirement into private life, we find the wife writing to her husband, during one of his few and brief absences from her, a letter which begins: "My Beloved, I trust in God that you are well again, as your letters assure me you are," and ends, "May angels guard thee, my best friend!" Before her death, Mrs. Madison finally turned from the frivolities of society, was baptized and confirmed by the Bishop of Maryland, and declared that "There is nothing in this world really worth caring for." She did not include her love for her husband among the "things of this world"; and doubtless she spoke of the rest from full knowledge and with true judgment. She had in her nature elements which under stress showed high and noble; but probably she will be best remembered as the representative woman of American society during the formative period of the republic.