Learning that the General Assembly was in session at Charlottesville, Cornwallis detached the "ferocious Tarlton," as notoriously styled, to proceed to that place, take by surprise the members, seize on the person of Mr. Jefferson, whom they supposed still in office, and spread devastation and terror on his route.

Elated with the idea of an enterprise so congenial to his disposition, and confident of an easy prey, Tarlton selected a competent body of men, trained to habitual licentiousness by unrestrained indulgence and the demoralizing influence of example, and proceeded with ardor on his ignoble expedition. Early in the morning of June 4th, when within about ten miles of his destination, he detached a troop of horse, under Captain M'Cleod, to Monticello, the well known seat of Mr. Jefferson; and proceeded himself with the main body, to Charlottesville, were he expected to find the Legislature unapprised of his movement. The alarm, however, had been conveyed to Charlottesville, about sunrise the same morning, and thence quickly to Monticello, only three miles distant. The Speakers of the two Houses, were lodging with Mr. Jefferson at his house. His guests had barely time to hurry to Charlottesville, adjourn the Legislature over to Staunton, and, with most of the other members, to effect their escape. He immediately ordered his carriage, in which Mrs. Jefferson and her children were conveyed to the house of Colonel Carter, on the neighbouring mountain, while himself tarried behind, breakfasted as usual, and completed some necessary arrangements preparatory to his departure. Suddenly, a messenger, Lieutenant Hudson, who had descried the rapid advance of the enemy, drove up at half speed, and gave him a second and last alarm; stating that the enemy were already ascending the winding road, which leads to the summit of Monticello, and urging his immediate flight. He then calmly ordered his riding horse, which was shoeing at a neighboring blacksmiths, directing him to be led to a gate opening on the road to Colonel Carter's, whither he walked by a cross path, mounted his horse, and, instead of taking the high road, plunged into the woods of the adjoining mounting, and soon rejoined his family. In less than ten minutes after Mr. Jefferson's departure, his house was surrounded by the impetuous light horse, thirsting for their noble prey. They entered the mansion of the patriot, with a flush of expectation proportioned to the value of their supposed victim; and, notwithstanding the

chagrin and irritation which the first discovery of their disappointment excited, a sacred and honorable regard was manifested for the usages of enlightened nations at war. Mr. Jefferson's property was respected, especially his books and papers, by the particular injunetions of M'Cleod. So much does the conduct of soldiers, depend on the principles and temper of their officers.

This is the famous adventure of Carter's mountain, which has been so often and so scandalously caricatured in the licentious chronicles of partisan controversy. Had the facts been accidentally stated, it would have appeared, that this favorite fabrication amounted to nothing more, than that Mr. Jefferson did not remain in his house, and there fight, single handed, a whole troop of horse, whose main body, too, was within supporting distance, or suffer himself to be taken prisoner. It is somewhat singular, that this egregious offence was never heard of until many years after, when most of that generation had disappeared, and a new one risen up. Although the whole affair happened some days before the abortive attempt at impeachment, yet neither his conduct on this occasion, nor his pretended flight from Richmond, in January previous, were included among the charges.

Having accompanied his family one day's journey, Mr. Jefferson returned to Monticello. Finding the enemy retired, with few traces of depredation, he again rejoined his family, and proceeded with them to an estate he owned in Bedford; where, galloping over his farm one day, he was thrown from his horse, and disabled from riding on horse-back for a considerable time. But the federal version of the story found it more convenient to give him this fall in his retreat before Tarlton, some weeks anterior, as a proof that he withdrew from a troop of horse, with a precipitancy which Don Quixote would not have practiced.

M'Cleod tarried about eighteen hours at Monticello, and Tarlton about the same time at Charlottesville, when the detachments reunited, and retired to Elkhill, a plantation of Mr. Jefferson's. At this place, Cornwallis had now encamped, with the main army, and established head quarters. Some idea may be formed of the van. dalism practiced by the British, during their continuance at Elkhill, and, indeed, through the whole succeeding part of that campaign, from the following extract of a letter, written by Mr. Jefferson, on

a special request. It is dated July 16th, 1788, and addressed to Dr. Gordon, one of the compilers of our revolutionary history.

"Cornwallis remained in this position ten days, his own headquarters being in my house, at that place. I had time to remove most of the effects out of the house. He destroyed all my growing crops of corn and tobacco; he burned all my barns, containing the same articles of the last year, having first taken what corn he wanted; he used, as was to be expected, all my stock of cattle, sheep, and hogs, for the sustenance of his army, and carried of all the horses capable of service; of those too young for service, he cut the throats; and he burned all the fences on the plantation so as to leave it an absolute waste. He carried off also about thirty slaves. Had this been to give them freedom, he would have done right; but it was to consign them to inevitable death from the small-pox and putrid fever, then raging in his camp. This I knew after wards to be the fate of twenty-seven of them. I never had news of the remaining three, but presume they shared the same fate. When I say that Lord Cornwallis did all this, I do not mean that he carried about the torch in his own hands, but that it was all done under his eye; the situation of the house in which he was, commanding a view of every part of the plantation, so that he must have seen every fire. I relate these things on my own knowledge, in a great degree, as I was on the ground soon after he left it. He treated the rest of the neighborhood somewhat in the same style, but not with that spirit of total extermination with which he seemed to rage over my possessions. Wherever he went, the dwelling-houses were plundered of every thing which could be carried off. Lord Cornwallis' character in England would forbid the belief that he shared in the plunder; but that his table was served with the plate thus pillaged from private houses, can be proved by many hundred eye-witnesses. From an estimate I made at that time, on the best information I could collect, I supposed the State of Virginia lost under Lord Cornwallis' hands, that year, about thirty thousand slaves; and that of these, about twenty-seven thousand died of the small-pox and camp-fever, and the rest were partly sent to the West Indies, and exchanged for rum, sugar, coffee, and fruit, and partly sent to New York, from whence they went, at the peace, either to Nova Scotia or England. From this last place, I believe they have been lately sent to Africa. History will never relate the horrors committed by the British army, in the southern States of America. They raged in Virginia six months only, from the middle of April to the middle of October, 1781, when they were all taken prisoners; and I give you a faithful specimen of their transactions for ten days of that time, and on one spot only. Ex pede Herculem. I suppose their whole devastations during those six months, amounted to about three millions sterling."

We are now hurried, with instinctive pleasure, from the distressing scenes of war and confusion, to a delightful interval in Mr. Jefferson's life, in which he recurred with eagerness, to the sober and refreshing pursuits of science.

During the early part of the turbulent year of '81, while disabled from active employment by the fall from his horse, he found sufficient leisure to compose his celebrated "Notes on Virginia"; than which, no other work in the English language, of the same magnitude, possesses more substantial merits, or has attained a more extensive and abiding reputation. This was the only original publication in which he ever embarked; nor was the present work prepared with any intention, whatever, of committing it to the press. Its history is a little curious.

M. de Marbois, of the French legation, in Philadelphia, having been instructed by his government to obtain such statistical accounts of the different States of the Union, as might be useful for their information, addressed a letter to Mr. Jefferson, containing a number of queries relative to the State of Virginia. These queries embraced an extensive range of objects, and were designed to elicit a general view of the geography, natural productions, government, history, and laws of the Commonwealth. Mr. Jefferson had always made it a practice, when travelling, to commit his observations to writing; and to improve every opportunity, by conversations with the inhabitants, and by personal examination, to enlarge his stock of information on the physical and moral condition of the country.

These memoranda were on loose pieces of paper, promiscuously intermixed, and difficult of recurrence, when occasion required the use of any particular one. He improved the present opportunity, therefore, to digest and embody the substance of them, in the order of M. de Marbois queries, so as to answer the double purpose of gratifying the wishes of the French government, and of arranging them for his own convenience. Some friends, to whom they were occasionally communicated in manuscript, requested copies; but their volume rendering the business of transcribing too laborious, he proposed to get a few printed, for their private gratification. He was asked such a price, however, as exceeded, in his opinion, the importance of the object, and abandoned the idea. Subsequently, on his arrival in Paris in '84, he found the printing could be ob

tained for one fourth part of what he had been asked in America. He thereupon revised and corrected the work, and had two hundred copies printed, under the modest title which it bears. He gave out a very few copies, to his particular friends in Europe, writing in each one a restraint against its publication; and the remainder he transmitted to his friends in America. An European copy, by the death of the owner, having got into the hands of a Paris bookseller, he engaged a hireling translation, and sent it into the world in the most injurious form possible. "I never had seen," says the Author, "so wretched an attempt at translation. Interverted, abridged, mutilated, and often reversing the sense of the original, I found it a blotch of errors from beginning to end." Under these circumstances, he was urged by the principle of self defence, to comply with the request of a London bookseller, to publish the English original; which he accordingly did. By this means, it soon be came extensively the property of the public, and advanced to a high degree of popularity. The work has since been translated into all the principal tongues of Europe, and run through a large number of editions in England, France,* and America.

The principal attractions of this unambitious volume are, the solid mass of science, natural and historical, which it contains; its sound philosophy in matters of government, religion, morals, &c.; its triumphant vindication of the man of America, aboriginal and emigrant, and the other cis-atlantic animals, against the fanciful and contumelious theories of European philosophers; the quantity and variety of general information on useful collateral subjects, which it embraces; and the beauty and unpretending simplicity of its style.

The first five chapters, in pursuance of the order of M. de Marbois queries, are occupied with geographical details, comprehending a description of the extent and boundaries of Virginia; a circumstantial account of its rivers, their navigableness, and connections with the Atlantic; a philosophical view of its stupendous mountains, its beautiful cascades, caverns, and other interesting curiosities of nature, with the phenomena attending them. Our limits will not permit us to indulge in quotations, or the reader should be gratified with the Author's description of the passage of the Potowmac

*The celebrated Abbe Morellet published a translation of his Notes, in 1786.