THE CONSERVATIVE REFORMER l6l 



His work on legislative committees was enough to 

 tax the stoutest nerves, yet he found time for his gar- 

 dening and his scientific studies, and thanked the Lord 

 for the thoroughness of the early training which en- 

 abled him to solace himself in the intervals of hard 

 work by reading Homer in the original. Such strong 

 natures find relaxation and rest in what to ordinary 

 mortals is painful drudgery. His Greek and his 

 mathematics were a relief to him, and of course he 

 worked all the better for them, as well as for his farm- 

 ing and his hunting and his violin. His tastes were 

 all wholesome, pure, and refining ; his motives were 

 disinterested and lofty ; and under that sweet, placid 

 surface his energy was like a consuming fire. Seldom 

 has a man so stamped his personality upon a com- 

 munity as Jefferson in these few years upon Virginia, 

 and thus indirectly and in manifold ramifications upon 

 the federal nation in which Virginia was for nearly 

 half a century more to be the leading state. The code 

 of Virginia, when he had done with it, might almost 

 have been called the Code Jefferson. Pity that his 

 influence, reenforced by that of Washington and Madi- 

 son, Wythe and Mason, could not then have removed 

 her from the list of slave states ! Every Virginian to- 

 day must confess that that was a pity. But Jefferson 

 did all that it was in human strength to do. To the 

 end of his days he mourned over negro slavery, and 

 saw in it the rock upon which the ship of state might 

 break into pieces and founder. " I tremble for my 

 country," said he, " when I think of the negro and 

 know that God is just." All the agony that creased 

 its furrows upon the brow of Abraham Lincoln was 

 foretold in those solemn words. 



