WII,SON AND CONTEMPORARY AMERICANS 9I 



"With my best wishes for your continued 

 Health and tranquiHty, and in the Hope that you 

 may still be made the instrument to arrest the 

 sinister cause of our politics, and recall the Re- 

 public to its original purity, I beg you to be as- 

 sured of my high respect and attachment. 



"Ja: Wilkinson." 



These letters, which I beheve have never before 

 been published, should be enough to establish that 

 instead of Jefferson's being "forgetful alike of the 

 duties of his station, and the common courtesies 

 of life" and refusing "encouragement to the cul- 

 tivation of science and literature" ; so far was he 

 from losing "the opportunity of having won him- 

 self imperishable honour, by patronizing a man 

 of true genius, of nature's own nobility — the high 

 nobility of mind," he on the contrary was among 

 Wilson's first subscribers, received him with cour- 

 tesy and attention, and even after his death wrote 

 to his son-in-law, Joseph Coolidge, in 1825, re- 

 questing him to endeavor to have a new octavo 

 edition of Wilson's Ornithology published in Bos- 

 ton; a further indication of his high opinion of 

 the man and his work. It has been many years 

 since the last biography of Alexander Wilson was 

 written, and it is now high time that instead of 

 condemning Jefferson for an apparent breach of 

 courtesy, the circumstances of which we do not 

 thoroughly know, we should render him all honor 

 for the real encouragement which he gave the 

 naturalist, an encouragement which, to Wilson, 

 was no small matter. 



